Scientists Leave U.S. for Finland, Canada and Europe as Grants Stall; White House Says It Is Ending Waste

Halley Froehlich figured she would spend her whole career in America. Her family has been here since the 1700s. Now she studies how fish, shellfish and seaweed respond to climate change from the University of Helsinki, after moving to Finland with her husband and daughter.

She says delayed federal grants and fears about the future drove the move.

She is not alone. Scientists and professional groups say foreign universities in Canada, France, Belgium and Finland have built programs to recruit U.S. researchers, promising steadier funding and academic freedom. Several are publicly touting their American hires.

What the numbers show

No one has a national count of how many scientists have left. The pieces that exist point the same direction.

• More than half of U.S. states have lost scientists to recruitment programs abroad, according to an April report from the Business for Federal Research Funding Coalition.
• Early-career biomedical scientists were about 20 percentage points less likely to say they would stay in the U.S. than they recalled being six months earlier.
• Physics PhD graduates in 2025 left the country at the highest rate in 30 years, according to the American Institute of Physics.

"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 at the Association of American Universities.

Christine Stawitz left the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last year for a research software engineer job at the University of Birmingham in England. She said NOAA no longer aligned with her values after she was asked to strip websites of references to climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion. "It used to be the shining city on the hill where we all want to go," she said.

The strain inside federal labs

A New York Times report published Oct. 31 describes a system under pressure despite roughly $200 billion a year in federal research spending. According to that reporting:

• More than 1,000 Energy Department scientists and technical staff have left.
• The National Science Foundation has withheld more than $1 billion.
• The National Institutes of Health delayed or canceled more than 2,000 biomedical grants.

The Times also reports that Pentagon labs lost a significant share of staff after federal workforce cuts. It says refilling critical posts has been slowed by loyalty screening for new hires, and cites a Defense Department report warning of potentially grave consequences.

The Times ties much of the pressure to last year's grant cancellations and the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency cuts. Scientists and officials quoted in its reporting say those moves are eroding the research base behind U.S. advantages in defense, medicine and technology.

That last point is the one conservatives who care about the China contest should not wave off. Cutting waste is a legitimate goal. Losing weapons-lab staff and slowing their replacement through loyalty screens is a different matter. Beijing does not need to win a recruiting war if Washington loses people on its own.

The administration's position

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

The administration has also announced a $100 million push to train American scientists, along with a broader science initiative. The American Association of University Professors describes that initiative as promising more than $6 billion in combined federal, industry, academic and philanthropic investment, much of it organized around artificial intelligence.

The AAUP's Committee on Technology and Higher Education argues the plan "shifts institutional power toward big tech conglomerates and away from independent researchers." In its commentary, the committee says federally defined missions and expanded corporate computing partnerships will give "commercial goals and political priorities unprecedented influence over scientific research."

The administration has not endorsed that characterization. Its stated aim, in the initiative's own banner, is "revitalizing American scientific enterprise."

What is still unsettled

The departures are real, but the scale is not established. Individual accounts, survey data and state-level tallies do not add up to a national figure, and the AP's reporting says so directly. Whether the 2,000-plus delayed or canceled NIH grants were wasteful or valuable is also contested. The scientists leaving say the research was sound, while the White House says it is eliminating waste.

The most important fixed data point is the Defense Department report on lab staffing. Its warning about grave consequences, and the effect of loyalty screening on filling those posts, is the piece with the most direct bearing on national security.