Meet the Researchers Leaving the U.S. Due to Trump's Funding Cuts

— Experts say the shift is clear, unprecedented, and concerning

Halley Froehlich, PhD, was sure she'd spend her scientific career in the U.S. Her family has been in America since the 1700s.

But over the past 2 years, delayed federal grants and fears about the future motivated her to pack her life into boxes. She moved to Finland with her husband and daughter and is continuing her research -- studying how fish, shellfish, and seaweed that humans eat are responding to climate change -- at the University of Helsinki.

When the Trump administration began upending U.S. scientific research last year, dismantling the federal grant-giving processopens in a new tab or window and attempting to exert more political influenceopens in a new tab or window over what projects get funded, foreign universities saw an opportunity. They adopted programs to lure U.S. researchers abroadopens in a new tab or window, promising more stable streams of funding and academic freedom.

Since then, many have taken the bait. While there is no way to quantify the overall change across the nation, scientists, researchers, and professional groups say the shift is clear, unprecedented, and concerning.

"You can almost talk to any vice president for research at a university and they will tell you of one or two top faculty that they've lost," said Tobin Smith, senior vice president of government relations and public policy for the Association of American Universities.

White House spokesperson Liz Huston said Trump is "ending waste" and is "committed to keeping America the world leader in scientific innovation, and that means funding real science."

But more than half of American states have lost scientists to recruitment programs in other countries, according to an April reportopens in a new tab or window from the Business for Federal Research Funding Coalition. Last March, early-career biomedical scientists were about 20 percentage points less likely to say they would "now" stay in the U.S.opens in a new tab or window, compared to their recollection of how they felt 6 months earlier. And physics PhD graduates in 2025 left the U.S. at the highest rate in 30 yearsopens in a new tab or window, according to the American Institute of Physics.

Countries including Canada, France, Belgium, and Finland are touting their recruits from U.S. institutions, a disturbing and surprising development, scientists say, for a country that far and away leads the world in Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, and chemistry.

"It used to be the shining city on the hill where we all want to go," said Christine Stawitz, PhD, now at the University of Birmingham in England. "That reputational loss, I think, is hard to quantify, but also really damaging."

Some American Scientists Are Moving Abroad. Here's Why.

Stawitz left her job at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last year to become a research software engineer in the U.K. She said NOAA no longer aligned with her values, especially after she was asked to strip websites of references to climate change and diversity, equity, and inclusion topics.

She says the upheaval in U.S. science is a common subject at scientific meetings. "People talk about the U.S. at conferences in the U.K. now like, I don't know what's going on there. It's not good," she said.

Froehlich's decision to leave was a slow burn. She was already concerned about school safety and gun violence in the U.S. when the nation's research landscape was overturned. Then, at the University of California Santa Barbara, her colleagues' grants kept getting postponed or canceled. Student researchers burst into her office in tears, unsure how to navigate their futures. She worried about future federal funding for her own research, which involves climate change.

"The cumulative effect of those things ultimately ended up making us really serious about, I don't think here is our home anymore," said Froehlich. She was recruited through an initiative by the Research Council of Finland and now has 5 years of guaranteed funding totaling about $3 million. She moved into a flat by the Baltic Sea in Helsinki and is taking Finnish lessons offered by the university.

And International Scientists Are Leaving the U.S.

International researchers who were drawn to the U.S. for its reputation as a global leader in science are also seeking different places to do their work.

Married biologists James Letts, PhD, and Maria Maldonado, PhD, were recruited to Australia's Monash University and left behind their posts at the University of California Davis. Letts is from Canada, and Maldonado from Argentina. Both got their doctoral degrees in New York and spent over a decade doing science in the U.S.

Grant-related uncertainty -- including having to lay off a staff scientist while waiting for stalled funding -- made them take the leap.

"All I want to do is do great science and make discoveries, but I want my work to mean something as well. And the opportunity to do that seemed very difficult in the U.S.," Letts said.

Forty percent of the U.S. science Nobel Prizes were won by immigrantsopens in a new tab or window. Omar Yaghi, PhD, a 2025 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, left his post at the University of California Berkeley this year to direct an artificial intelligence lab at China's Tsinghua University.

The Consequences of Losing Scientific Talent

The U.S. is still a science powerhouse, full of institutions around the country with robust research communities and well-resourced institutions that attract foreign scientists. Even if every European country threw open its doors, there still wouldn't be enough capacity to accommodate every American scientist.

And not everyone is leaving. Many scientists are choosing to stay, searching for new sources of research funding or pivoting to jobs in industry.

But the erosion of reputation and the talent drain may not be over. The Trump administration has cut or frozen up to $174 billionopens in a new tab or window in federal grants since the president's second term began, according to a tracking tool released by the States United Democracy Center and the organization Grant Witness. And a proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget could give political appointees more control over what future projects are funded. A resolution approved by Congress has delayed a final decision on the rule until December.

Scientists who have moved away and those still in the U.S. are worried about what's left behind. They say the next generation of scientists may struggle with fewer graduate programs, money, and mentorship -- and it could take a decade or longer for the U.S. scientific enterprise to truly feel those effects.

Major research institutions accepted 15% fewer applicantsopens in a new tab or window for fall 2026 doctoral programs compared to last year, according to admissions data collected by the Association of American Universities. One of the students impacted was a mentee of Smith's.

"What is one of my pieces of advice to that young man? Next year, look in Canada," he said.