For decades, the U.S. was seen as a nation that prized its universities and scientific researchers.
That changed when President Trump began his second term, says Megan Peters, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Irvine.
"It became very apparent, very quickly, that the new administration did not value higher education," she says, or the scientific research done at universities.
"So when I went on the job market, I started looking around overseas," Peters says.
So have many other U.S.-based research scientists.
An analysis by the journal Nature found that in the first quarter of 2025, U.S. scientists submitted nearly a third more applications for jobs abroad than they had during the same period in 2024.
In March 2025, a survey of more than 1,600 scientists in the U.S. found that 75% were considering leaving the U.S.
Now, a growing number of prominent U.S. researchers are reporting that they have accepted posts in countries including Europe, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Peters is one of those scientists. She will move to University College London this summer.
Other prominent brain scientists heading for the U.K. include Tamara Swaab and Ron Mangun of the University of California, Davis. The married couple have accepted positions at the University of Birmingham.
Science funding under siege
The departures are, in part, a response to changes in federal funding of scientific research in the U.S.
Soon after Trump took office in 2025, grants were delayed or terminated. Universities came under fire for conducting research related to race and gender. And government funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, were reshaped to better align with White House priorities.
The Trump administration maintains that all of those measures are part of an ongoing effort to restore gold standard science, reduce bureaucracy and cut costs while conducting essential research.
When the changes began to take hold, Peters was already considering options beyond her tenured position at UC Irvine. The new funding landscape gave her doubts about taking any job in the U.S.
Meanwhile, other nations were stepping up efforts to recruit international scientists.
The U.K's Royal Society and the European Research Council, for example, now offer grants specifically designed to attract scientists from nations including the U.S. These countries have also made it easier for scientists to obtain work visas.
Steve Fleming, a professor at University College London, saw an opportunity to recruit Peters to that school's Department of Experimental Psychology.
"I was aware that a role was going to be advertised in that department, and we started having a conversation about how that could be a good fit for her," he says.
Peters, who studies how the brain deals with uncertainty, was interested — even though the move would mean a pay cut.
"London was a big draw in general, and University College London in particular was a huge draw scientifically and professionally," she says.
It was also a place where her partner, an aerospace engineer, could find a job.
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.
"There are certainly opportunities that are not available to me here in the United States," she says.
Peters is just one of the U.S. scientists expected to arrive at University College London over the summer. She will be joined by two other "high profile recruits," Fleming says, both of whom left tenured positions.
Then there are Tamara Swaab and Ron Mangun, who will land at the University of Birmingham after spending more than three decades at UC Davis. Swaab studies the neuroscience of language while Mangun studies the neural mechanisms of attention.
Swaab, who got her Ph.D. in the Netherlands, says one reason she initially came to the U.S. was that, early in her career, Europe had less to offer women scientists.
"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," Swaab says, "and there was this optimism."
Now that sort of optimism is more present in British and European scientists, she says.
Another factor is that her husband has received a grant from the U.K.'s $70 million Global Talent Fund, which was created to attract researchers from other nations.
"We're really excited to be able to bring such brilliant researchers to Birmingham," says Rachel O'Reilly, a professor at Birmingham who helped recruit Swaab and Mangun.
The new funding and national commitment to science in the U.K. offer "a little bit certainty at a time of uncertainty for our colleagues in the U.S.," O'Reilly says.
But the couple's move is more than just a reaction to the current state of science in the U.S., Mangun says. It's also an opportunity to try something new and interact with a different group of top-level scientists, while maintaining their emeritus positions at UC Davis.
Mangun believes that eventually, voters in the U.S. will restore research funding and renew the nation's commitment to science.
"They want science, they want exploration, they want discovery, they want cures," he says, "and I think they're going to demand it."
When that happens, he says, scientists will have more reason to stay.
Copyright 2026 NPR
