Marion Schmidt had actually traveled to one of the most important gatherings of researchers to present recent developments at her university. The annual event held by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is one of the most prestigious scientific conferences in the world, with AI researchers, astrophysicists, biologists and others making the pilgrimage to Boston.
Together with her colleagues from the Center for Tactile Internet at the Technical University of Dresden, Schmidt was eager to share their recent results, including smart gloves with the ability to recognize early on the next object a person is likely to grab.
Ultimately, though, says Schmidt, the podium discussion focused less on her research results and more on possible career opportunities in Germany. She says she felt almost like she was at an academic recruiting event: "Young students wanted to know how university studies in Germany work. Professors were asking how they could get an appointment at a university.”
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 18/2025 (April 25th, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL.
Schmidt is the head of communications for TU Dresden and part of the university leadership. She was able to tell a NASA researcher, who was afraid of losing her job as soon as the following week, that five new professorships would soon need to be filled: Together with the German Center for Astrophysics, TU Dresden will be introducing a new course of study. Perhaps she might be interested? Initial contacts have been made.
Might NASA experts soon be coming to Saxony? Will AI researchers be leaving Stanford for Karlsruhe? Boston-based biomedical experts to Bavaria? Some appear to be thinking about it – while others are making concrete plans. This year’s AAAS conference seemed to hint at a potential brain drain – an emigration of academic elites out of the United States.
Many researchers are looking for a new home because the Trump administration has launched a broadside attack on science in the U.S. Undesirable students who do not hold American passports are to be deported.
Students like Mahmoud Khalil, who helped organize pro-Palestinian student protests at Columbia University in New York and who has been accused by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio of undermining U.S. foreign policy. Khalil’s defense attorneys deny the accusation, citing freedom of expression. Or the South Korean Yunseo Chung, who has been living in the United States since she was seven years old and took part in demonstrations.Under Trump’s leadership, Washington is also planning to slash financial support, with universities like Harvard, Columbia and Cornell losing hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, in funding. Some universities, not knowing where the money will come from in the future, have responded with hiring freezes, delayed infrastructure investments and cancelled commitments for doctoral positions.
Harvard University alone stands to lose several billion dollars in federal funding and its academic integrity is at stake. The Trump administration recently demanded that Harvard change its admissions processes and that it share all relevant data with the authorities. In addition, Washington demanded that student rights be curtailed and international students who break the rules be reported to the authorities. Harvard President Alan Garber refused to accept the conditions and instead filed a lawsuit against the government.
Undeterred, Trump doubled down. As a non-profit institution, Harvard enjoys wide-ranging tax privileges. But the White House now wants to have that status reviewed. Were its tax-free status revoked, Harvard could owe billions in taxes on its assets.
Trump is also shutting down the most important source for medical research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have a budget of almost $48 billion and send about 80 percent of that total onward to U.S. universities and research institutes in the form of grants.
In early April, though, 1,300 agency employees were laid off and the NIH was ordered to cut $2.6 billion in spending this year. In total, the NIH budget is to be slashed by 35 percent. Other agencies under the aegis of the Department of Health have suffered a similar fate, including the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration.
The consequences will be vast, and they will affect every part of the country. Research doesn’t just produce improved therapies and better medical drugs, it also stimulates the economy. According to a report by United for Medical Research, every dollar of NIH funding produces a profit of $2.56 – a return that stock market investors can only dream of. State funding also guarantees more than 408,000 jobs across the country.
Where are the researchers supposed to go? Some would like to lure them across the Atlantic to Germany. Including Patrick Cramer.
Max Planck Society President Patrick Cramer is seeking to attract U.S.-based scientists to Germany.
On a Monday in early April, Cramer, the President of the Max Planck Society, attended a reception in the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. He had spent the previous week touring through the U.S., visiting Stanford University and colleges in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Finger sandwiches and sparkling wine were served, and then Cramer stepped up to the podium. "We are going to launch a Max Planck Trans-Atlantic program,” he told the audience. Several new research centers are to be set up to promote cooperation with leading U.S. institutions and additional positions for postdoctoral researchers will be offered. It is a well-aimed move: The young scientists he is targeting frequently have to generate funding for their research themselves and are particularly affected by the measures taken by the Trump administration. Cramer’s announcement was well-received by the American academics who attended the event.
Following World War II, the U.S. invested more money in academic research and development than any other Western industrialized country. It is a strategy that has produced 400 Nobel prizes for the country, far more than any other.
According to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, the U.S. was responsible for 27 percent of global research and development activities in 2019, followed by China with 22 percent. Japan (7 percent) and Germany (6 percent) were well behind. Trump’s attack on science and the universities threatens to reverse that trend.
Indeed, more and more scientists who thought they would be spending their careers in the United States are now on the search for a new academic home. We got in touch with four of them.
Neuroscientist Danielle Beckman: "Colleagues often cry."
Beckman works as a neuroscientist at the National Primate Research Center in Davis, California
Eight years ago, I came to the U.S. from my home country of Brazil after completing my doctorate. At the time, many of my colleagues dreamed of working in the U.S. The country was a place full of opportunities for us, the center of research – even though Donald Trump was also president at the time. Now it feels like being on the sinkingTitanic.
My research focuses on Alzheimer's, dementia and Long Covid. In the lab, I study monkey brains: I dissect and prepare them to look at them under the microscope and learn about the diseases.
In Brazil, I mainly worked with mice. But I wanted to do research on primates because it is more relevant to the treatment of humans. That is another reason why I moved to a U.S. university. That was possible here.
Unfortunately, there's not much left of it. Grants and research funding are being cancelled and decisions on applications are being postponed indefinitely. Our lab was supposed to receive $2.5 million, then the funding was abruptly cancelled. The whole team was counting on the money; it was supposed to last for the next three years. Now, people are likely to be laid off. The lab may even have to close down completely.
I don't know any researchers who have not been affected by the government's cuts. The mood at the university is depressed, colleagues often cry. Those who voted for Trump are now regretting it. They didn't expect him to restrict science so severely. Many of us who research neurological diseases were particularly surprised.
It seems as if Trump wants to take revenge for what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. When words like "vaccination,” "COVID” or "prevention” appear in our research proposals, they are not approved.
Doctors marching in protest in New York. The Trump administration has pushed through major cuts to medical research.
For the first time in my life, I don't feel welcome in the U.S. It makes me angry that what I have worked hard for is no longer valued. I made it through Trump's first term; I won't make it through the second.
A professor from Germany who, like me, is researching Long Covid has contacted me. In the summer, I will be moving to Munich. I'm currently taking care of the work visa and the move. It's a lot of work, but I'm sure it will be worth it.
I was ready to settle permanently in the U.S. Now, I have to change places again and start over just to be able to continue my work. That makes me sad.
For universities in Europe, this is an opportunity. They can now recruit people from the U.S. and strengthen their own research.
But the U.S. is jeopardizing its supremacy in research. They are not only chasing away scientists like me who have been here for a long time. They are also scaring off young researchers who would otherwise have come here. I no longer know anyone abroad who still dreams of doing research in the United States.
Climate researcher Colin Evans: "I applied immediately."
Evans is a climate scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York
I saw the posting at the perfect time, about a week after Trump won. I found it online in mid-November and was really excited. It was a position studying climate extremes over Ireland and I applied immediately.
I primarily study weather and climate phenomena like extreme precipitation and heat. But given the current state of affairs and attacks on climate science, it feels like I won't be able to continue this research in the coming years – and that's assuming my position remains at Cornell.
Our institute has so far been largely funded by grants from the National Oceanic an Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation. These institutions are being gutted, with many climate scientists already having been fired and more expected. They are reviewing grants with key terms like "climate” and "greenhouse gas,” and they will likely be cancelled.
When I started my doctorate in 2017, it was Trump's first term, and climate researchers were already avoiding specific terms, changing "climate change" to "climate variability,” for example. But it is a lot worse now. I've seen folks who are usually pretty outspoken suddenly go silent.
Demonstrators at Harvard University against interference by the Trump administration.
I knew this was coming. As much as Trump tried to distance himself from "Project 2025" during the election campaign, a lot of us saw that Trump was absolutely in favor of it. The manifesto is a direct attack on climate science and institutions like the NOAA and the National Weather Service. And Trump isn’t the only one who supports it. Vice President JD Vance said that "the universities are the enemy.”
So I was all the more excited when the employer in Ireland contacted me for an interview. Then, at the end of February, they informed me that I was the top candidate. I was incredibly humbled and excited. And more than anything, relieved. When I told my current supervisor, he was both sad to lose me, but also slightly relieved that he won't have to worry about my salary in the coming months.
I've signed the employment contract and received permission to work and reside in Ireland. We are all excited: my wife, my four-year-old daughter and me. It’s a huge step and a big change. But it’s one we think is best for us and, most importantly, for our daughter.
I start in Ireland at the beginning of June. Overall, I will be earning slightly less than here in the U.S. But the cost of living, aside from housing, is lower in Ireland. The salary reduction is worth it to me. I want to be able to engage in climate research without worrying each day whether or not my position is going to be terminated. We need to get the climate crisis under control.
Climate researcher Benjamin Santer: "For the first time since 1983, I find myself without an academic home."
Santer is a former climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California
I'll soon be 70. But now, I'm going to start a new life again and move to a different continent. I want to continue doing research. I want to keep sharing my findings with the public without fear of reprisals.
For over four decades, I have been seeking to identify human fingerprints in climate data. I started doing this work in Germany. Starting in 1987, I spent five years in Hamburg at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology under Professor Klaus Hasselmann, who received the Nobel Prize in 2021 for his work in climate science. It was in Hamburg that I first used the fingerprinting methods developed by Hasselmann.
In 1992, I switched to the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, where I was asked to be the lead author of a key chapter in the 1995 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We concluded at the time that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” In the following years, we helped identify a clearer picture of human fingerprints on climate.
Columbia University faculty protesting against the Trump administration's actions against the university.
But during Trump's first term, everything changed. The president and his team spread many false claims, saying that the causes of climate change were unknown, or that there had been no significant warming since 1998. We demonstrated in detail, in peer-reviewed scientific studies, that these claims were false. In response, the first Trump administration made two complaints about my behavior and the funding for our attribution research team at Livermore was cut.
I decided to step down from a leadership role to allow my younger colleagues to continue their work and left Livermore. I then worked for two other institutions and continued to find strong evidence of human effects on climate. I recently ended both affiliations after Trump was elected for a second time – to protect my colleagues from reprisals. Now, for the first time since 1983, I find myself without an academic home.
But I want to keep working. Not for the money; I have enough for a decent living. But because it's so important to get to the bottom of the effects of human-caused climate change and talk about it with other people. And because science is a defining part of my identity.
That's why I'll be moving to Europe soon. I plan to apply for a special skilled worker visa and return to research. To do this, I'll be selling my house in Oregon and leaving behind friends and family. It will be particularly hard to say goodbye to my son. We're very close, but he sees his future here in the U.S. I don't – not under this president.
Researcher Adam Siepel: "I'm white, male and heterosexual. Therefore, I'm not as vulnerable as other scientists."
Siepel is a professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York
I analyze large amounts of genetic data, for cancer research, for example, or to understand patterns of gene expression.
When our politicians claim we're in a race against China for scientific supremacy, I believe them. But why are they then taking measures that are destroying our scientific infrastructure in America?
The mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services and at the National Institutes for Health, which fund medical research, shocked me. The people who still work in these agencies barely communicate with the outside world. Hardly any researcher who submits a research grant application now knows whether their application will even be processed or whether it will end up in the trash.
A protest in Manhattan against the Trump administration's massive cuts to scientific research.
I, personally, was lucky: The grants for my research projects were approved several months ago. I'm also in a comparatively stable position. I have many years of experience, good working conditions and an institute behind me that only partially relies on funding from our national government. Furthermore, I'm white, male and heterosexual. Therefore, I'm not as vulnerable as other scientists.
But the way science and universities are being treated here scares me. Other researchers and institutes are now having to lay off employees because they no longer receive funding for their work and don't know if the money will ever come back.
Many ideas for successful products and services have emerged from government-funded research projects at universities. Often, professors and students found a small startup based on a promising project – which then develops a product and grows into a larger company. If we in America no longer support these projects, it will set us back in competition with China or other countries.
The development of young academics is also being hampered: This would normally be the season for recruiting student and research assistants or doctoral students. But many institutes are afraid to hire these people because they don't know if they can pay them.
This has consequences: Not only is work in the laboratory left undone due to a lack of staff. But many young scientists are wondering whether they should pursue a different path outside of academia. Or whether they should leave the U.S.
My wife and I are also seriously considering it. In the past few weeks, I have contacted research colleagues in Canada, Spain and Switzerland, and I will soon call one or two acquaintances in Germany. I described the situation here in the U.S. and asked them to let me know if anything happens in their area. It's not easy to find anything comparable to my position. And there are also family reasons that make it difficult for us to say goodbye, especially our elderly parents. Otherwise, we probably would have left already.
If the politicians in charge continue as they have in recent months, they will be surprised at how quickly a brain drain can occur. Then we in the U.S. will have to seriously fear for our scientific dominance.
