Meet the researchers leaving the US because of Trump's funding cuts and
politicization of science
[October 19, 2026]
By ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN
NEW YORK (AP) — Halley Froehlich was sure she'd spend her scientific
career in the United States. Her family has been in America since the
1700s.
But over the past two 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 process and attempting
to exert more political influence over what projects get funded, foreign
universities saw an opportunity. They adopted programs to lure U.S.
researchers abroad, 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 report
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., compared to their
recollection of how they felt six months earlier. And physics Ph.D.
graduates in 2025 left the U.S. at the highest rate in 30 years,
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, 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 last year to become a research software engineer in the
United Kingdom. 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 five 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.
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This photo taken with a smart phone and provided by Halley Froehlich
shows Froehlich holding a U.S. Aquaculture Society award in Santa
Barbara, Calif., on Feb. 27, 2026. (Halley Froehlich via AP)
 And international scientists are
leaving the US
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 and Maria Maldonado 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
immigrants. Omar Yaghi, 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 billion 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 applicants 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.
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