For decades, the U.S. was widely regarded as a premier destination for scientific research. That perception is shifting under President Donald Trump’s second term, according to interviews with researchers and a new analysis by the journal Nature.
An analysis by 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. A survey of more than 1,600 scientists in the U.S. conducted in March 2025 found that 75% were considering leaving the country.
The phenomenon has accelerated since Trump took office in 2025, when grants were delayed or terminated, and government funding agencies including the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation were reshaped to align with White House priorities, according to NPR.
The Trump administration maintains that the measures are part of an effort to restore “gold standard science,” reduce bureaucracy, and cut costs while conducting essential research, NPR reported.
Megan Peters, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Irvine, said the changes prompted her to look for work overseas. “It became very apparent, very quickly, that the new administration did not value higher education,” she told NPR, “or the scientific research done at universities.” Peters is leaving her tenured position to join University College London this summer, where she will study how the brain deals with uncertainty. She said her new role will give her access to funding opportunities “that are not available to me here in the United States.”
Steve Fleming, a professor at University College London, described Peters as the first of three “high profile recruits” heading to the school, all of whom left tenured positions in the U.S.
Tamara Swaab and Ron Mangun, married brain scientists who spent more than three decades at the University of California, Davis, are moving to the University of Birmingham. Swaab studies the neuroscience of language; Mangun studies the neural mechanisms of attention. Swaab, who earned her PhD in the Netherlands, said the optimism she once saw in American science has shifted to Europe. Mangun noted that he has received a grant from the U.K.’s $70 million Global Talent Fund, which was created to attract researchers from other nations. The couple will retain emeritus positions at UC Davis.
Rachel O’Reilly, a professor at Birmingham who helped recruit the couple, said 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.”
Mangun said he believes U.S. voters will eventually restore research funding and the nation’s commitment to science. “They want science, they want exploration, they want discovery, they want cures,” he told NPR, “and I think they’re going to demand it.”