75% of U.S. Researchers Are Thinking About Leaving. The Countries Recruiting Them Are Ready.

Terence Tao, the UCLA mathematician who won the Fields Medal at 31 and is widely considered one of the most brilliant minds in his generation, told PBS in April that for the first time in his career, he is "actually concerned about existential issues" — specifically, the possibility that his institute could close. He has been contacted by departments in Europe, Australia, and China. He says he would leave only in a worst-case scenario. But the fact that Terence Tao is using the phrase "worst case" when describing the state of American science is itself the story.

He is not alone. A poll published by the journal Nature found that 75 percent of researchers currently working in the United States are considering leaving the country. Among early-career scientists, the figure is closer to 80 percent. The number of U.S.-based scientists actively seeking employment overseas has risen 30 percent since last year, with applications clustering in Canada, Europe, and — in a development that should alarm policymakers — China.

This is not hypothetical attrition. This is a labor market repricing, and it is happening fast.

The Numbers Behind the Exodus

The pipeline of American research talent flowing overseas has accelerated at every measurable point. Applications from U.S.-based researchers to the European Research Council's early-career grants have nearly tripled in three years: 60 applicants in 2024, 116 in 2025, 169 in 2026. The ERC, which funds five-year grants with generous budgets and minimal bureaucratic interference, has become the default escape route for scientists who see the American system as increasingly hostile.

France and the European Union have pledged €500 million in grants specifically designed to attract researchers leaving the United States. Canada has expanded its research chairs program and streamlined visa processes for scientific talent. Australia has increased its ARC Discovery grants and is marketing directly to American postdocs. Even Lithuania — Stephen Jones, a biochemist who left Ohio State during the pandemic and now runs a lab at Vilnius University, reports that American colleagues are now calling him for advice on how to make the move.

The push factors are not subtle. The NIH awarded 24 percent fewer R01 grants in 2025 than the prior-year average — 1,319 fewer awards in the agency's flagship program. DOGE terminated 1,752 NSF grants worth $1.4 billion, with 66 percent of terminations concentrated in education and social sciences. Over 2,200 NIH grants totaling $3.8 billion have been canceled outright. The FY2027 budget request proposes cutting NSF by 54.5 percent, NIH by $5 billion, and eliminating three NIH institutes entirely: the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the Fogarty International Center, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

For a researcher in her third year of a five-year grant that just got terminated — or a postdoc watching her PI's lab shrink from six people to two — the European Research Council's stability looks less like an adventure and more like survival.

Who Is Leaving, and Who Cannot Afford To

The brain drain is not uniform, and understanding its contours matters for anyone planning their career or their next proposal.

Early-career researchers are the most mobile and the most vulnerable. Anna Darling, a Ph.D. student in neuroscience at Ohio State, told PBS that "the science world is kind of ending, at the collegiate level." She lost guaranteed funding for her program. Graduate students and postdocs have the fewest institutional ties and the lowest switching costs — they can relocate to a European lab with a single ERC fellowship, often at comparable or better compensation once cost-of-living adjustments are factored in. They are also the researchers the U.S. can least afford to lose, because they represent the next generation of scientific leadership.

Mid-career PIs face harder tradeoffs. Daniella Fodera, a biomedical engineer at Columbia studying uterine fibroids, had her NIH grant canceled in March before it was eventually restored. She told PBS she is now "considering other options" and seeking positions abroad, particularly in Europe. For established investigators with labs, equipment, and institutional relationships, leaving means dismantling years of infrastructure. But when an entire research program can evaporate with a single agency email, the calculus changes.

International researchers on U.S. visas face a uniquely precarious situation. Vidya Saravanapandian, a UCLA neuroscientist who immigrated from India on an H-1B visa, studies brain activity in children with developmental disorders. Her work depends on continued NIH funding. If her lab loses its grants, she does not just lose a job — she loses her legal status in the country. "Shutting down labs will have huge consequences," she said. "Your students will leave. Ideas are lost."

Tenured faculty at wealthy institutions are the least likely to leave — but their stability masks the broader crisis. A tenured professor at Johns Hopkins, which is tapping its $13.2 billion endowment for researcher bridge funding, faces a different reality than an assistant professor at a regional public university with no emergency fund and a 1,700-person research workforce dependent on federal grants.

The Competitive Landscape Has Flipped

For decades, the United States operated the world's most effective talent magnet for scientific researchers. Federal funding was abundant, academic freedom was expansive, and the combination of NIH, NSF, DOE, and DARPA created an ecosystem with no global equivalent. International scientists came to America for graduate school and stayed for careers. The flow was so reliable that it became invisible — an assumed feature of the landscape rather than something that required maintenance.

That assumption no longer holds. The U.S. share of global R&D spending has been declining for two decades, from 37 percent in 2000 to under 30 percent today. China's research spending has grown at roughly 10 percent annually over the same period. The EU's Horizon Europe program distributes €95.5 billion across seven years with transparent review processes and minimal political interference in grant decisions. When Nature's poll found 75 percent of U.S. researchers considering departure, it was not capturing a mood — it was capturing a market response to deteriorating conditions.

Christopher Newfield of UC Santa Barbara projects that if current trends persist, the United States could fall behind Europe and East Asia in basic research capacity within five years. The pharmaceutical industry — "an almost trillion-dollar industry," as McGraw Hill's analysis noted — depends on federally funded basic research for the discoveries that eventually become drugs. When those researchers leave, the entire downstream pipeline narrows.

The irony is sharp. The FY2027 budget request proposes cutting research funding to strengthen national security, while the researchers that budget would displace are being recruited by America's strategic competitors. China's talent recruitment programs, including the ones that prompted tightened security screening in the new SBIR/STTR reauthorization signed into law today, are benefiting directly from the instability the U.S. government is creating.

What Grant Seekers Should Do With This Information

The brain drain is a systemic crisis, but it creates specific strategic opportunities and risks for individual researchers.

If you are considering staying in the U.S., strengthen your position now. Bridge funding programs at Yale, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Arizona, and UConn are keeping researchers afloat while federal agencies sort out their priorities. Congress has repeatedly rejected the worst proposed cuts — NSF received $8.75 billion in FY2026 despite a proposed 55 percent reduction — and bipartisan support for research funding remains strong. If your institution offers emergency funding, apply immediately.

If you are considering leaving, the ERC is the most credible path. The Starting Grants (up to €1.5 million for 2-7 years post-Ph.D.), Consolidator Grants (up to €2 million for 7-12 years post-Ph.D.), and Advanced Grants (up to €2.5 million for established leaders) offer multi-year funding with investigator-driven research agendas. France's specific recruitment initiative adds another €500 million in targeted funding. The application cycles are annual, and the next deadlines are approaching.

Diversify your funding portfolio regardless of where you stay. The DOD's basic research programs, DOE's Office of Science (which saw a 2 percent budget increase in FY2026), and DARPA's open BAAs are less politically volatile than NIH and NSF. The newly reauthorized SBIR/STTR program will begin publishing solicitations from DOD, NIH, and NSF in late April through May 2026 — researchers with commercializable technology should pay close attention to the new Strategic Breakthrough Awards offering up to $30 million.

Foundation funding is growing, but modestly. Foundation giving rose 2.4 percent to $109.81 billion in 2024, and at least 35 philanthropies signed pledges to increase grantmaking by 20 percent or more. The MacArthur Foundation, Sloan Foundation, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute have all expanded their researcher support programs. But as the AAU's Toby Smith has emphasized, private philanthropy "is simply no replacement for the federal government."

Watch the FY2027 appropriations process closely. The budget request is not the budget. Congress writes appropriations bills, and the past two cycles have demonstrated that bipartisan coalitions can reject severe cuts. The Senate Commerce Committee's Democratic staff called the FY2027 proposal an "existential threat" that "science survived" in FY2026 — signaling that similar resistance is likely. The final numbers will emerge in late 2026 or early 2027 through continuing resolutions or an omnibus bill.

A System That Cannot Run on Reputation

The United States built its scientific dominance on a simple formula: fund research generously, welcome talent globally, and let curiosity drive discovery. Two of those three pillars are cracking. Federal funding has become unreliable and politically contested. Immigration policy has made the U.S. a less welcoming destination for international researchers. Only the culture of curiosity-driven science remains intact — and it is precisely that culture that departing researchers carry with them when they leave.

The 75 percent figure from Nature's poll will decline if Congress restores funding and agencies resume normal operations. But every researcher who actually leaves — every lab that closes, every graduate student who enrolls at ETH Zürich instead of MIT — represents a permanent subtraction from American capacity. The countries on the receiving end know this, and they are investing accordingly.

For researchers building their careers in this environment, the strategic imperative is to remain fundable across multiple systems simultaneously. Tools like Granted can help you identify opportunities across federal, foundation, and international funders — because in 2026, the smartest career strategy is the one that does not depend on a single government's budget cycle.