SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
A growing number of research scientists in the United States are moving their labs to other countries. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports on three U.S. researchers heading for the United Kingdom.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: For decades, the U.S. was seen as a nation that prized its universities and scientists. Megan Peters, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Irvine, thinks that changed when President Trump began his second term.
MEGAN PETERS: It became very apparent very quickly that the new administration did not value higher education, and not only did they not value it, but they actively were trying to dismantle it and to dismantle scientific research that goes along with that.
HAMILTON: Grants were delayed or terminated, universities came under fire, and government agencies like the National Institutes of Health were reshaped to reflect White House priorities. The Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the NIH, says it is focusing on gold standard science, reducing bureaucracy and conducting essential research at a more practical cost. Peters, who studies how the brain deals with uncertainty, had already been considering options beyond her tenured position at UC Irvine. Now she was having doubts about any job in the U.S.
PETERS: So when I went on the job market, I started looking around overseas.
HAMILTON: Meanwhile, overseas universities had begun stepping up efforts to recruit international scientists. Steve Fleming is a professor at University College London who had worked with Peters. He realized it might be possible to bring her to the school's department of experimental psychology.
STEVE FLEMING: I was aware that a role had - was going to be advertised in that department, and we started having a conversation about how that could be a good fit for her.
HAMILTON: It helped that groups like the U.K.'s Royal Society and the European Research Council had begun offering grants designed to attract international scientists like Peters, and she was interested, even though the move would mean a pay cut.
PETERS: London was a big draw in general and University College London, in particular, was a huge draw scientifically and professionally.
HAMILTON: So this summer, Peters and her partner are moving to London. She says one benefit of her position there will be the ability to tap into new funding sources.
PETERS: There are certainly opportunities that are not available to me here in the United States that I will now be eligible for, and that is - that's a big part of this draw.
HAMILTON: Steve Fleming says Peters is just one of the U.S. scientists expected to arrive this summer.
FLEMING: There are two other individuals, high-profile recruits from the U.S. Both had tenure.
HAMILTON: Such moves reflect a shift among U.S. researchers. The journal Nature found that in the first quarter of 2025, U.S.-based scientists submitted nearly a third more applications for overseas jobs than they had the previous year. A survey of academic researchers last year showed that 75% were considering leaving the U.S. Tamara Swaab and her husband, Ron Mangun, are neuroscientists who spent more than three decades at the University of California, Davis before deciding to take jobs at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. Swaab, who got her Ph.D. in the Netherlands, says one reason she came to the U.S. was that back then, Europe was less accepting of women scientists.
TAMARA SWAAB: What I always loved about science in the United States was how open it was and how people saw opportunities and would work for them, and there was this optimism.
HAMILTON: Now, Swaab says, that optimism is more present in British and European scientists. Also, the University of Birmingham was able to offer her husband a grant from the U.K.'s newly created Global Talent Fund. But Mangun says their move is more than just a reaction to the current state of science in the U.S.
RON MANGUN: It certainly is a factor. Was it the factor or was it the motivating factor for me? I'd say the answer to that was no.
HAMILTON: Mangun says the big attraction was trying something new while still maintaining ties with UC Davis. He also thinks voters in the U.S. will eventually restore the nation's commitment to research.
MANGUN: They want science. They want exploration. They want discovery. They want cures, and I think they're going to demand it.
HAMILTON: When that happens, he says, U.S. scientists will have more reason to stay. Jon Hamilton, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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