Canada selects 48 US researchers for C$504m relocation program

Stephanie Burt calls US funding cuts a generational disaster for science

Canada announced on Thursday that 48 researchers from US universities will relocate to Canadian institutions under a new government program, making up more than three-quarters of the 64 professors selected worldwide.

The cohort draws from a C$504m ($362m; £268m) funding pool earmarked for research in climate change, medicine, and other fields. Industry Minister Melanie Joly said Canada is “very glad that these fantastic professors are coming.”

Among those relocating is Seth Guikema, a climate resiliency researcher leaving the University of Michigan for the University of Western Ontario. Guikema said he approached Canadian institutions last year after concluding that “the funding environment in the US for anything related to climate and resilience has become challenging.” He said he was “looking for a good intellectual home where I could have practical impact.” Over the next eight years, he will use C$8m to research tools for preparing for natural hazards such as storms and wildfires.

The University of Michigan declined to comment.

The relocations come as the Trump administration has frozen federal research grants at many institutions and accused universities of being dominated by left-wing ideology and diversity policies while failing to tackle alleged campus antisemitism. The BBC contacted the White House and US Department of Education.

Steven Lamy, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, said major US grant agencies “have been cut and politicised” by the current administration. “All of a sudden employment offers from external universities are attractive,” he said.

Peter Caravan, a biopharmaceutical researcher and professor who worked for two decades at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, will move to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver to continue research on how illnesses including cancers and chronic diseases can be better detected. Caravan appeared emotional at the Thursday news conference announcing the appointments.

Stephanie Burt, an English professor at Harvard, called the funding cuts “a generational disaster for science and scientists.” She told the BBC Canada had offered a “far more welcoming environment” for academics.

Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said institutions feel “helpless” in the face of federal and state cuts. The deeper concern, she added, “is not the short-term brain drain,” but “the possibility that the US could become less attractive as a place to pursue knowledge.”

Asked whether the program could be viewed as an escalation of the US-Canada trade war — which reached a major turning point over tariffs in recent weeks — Joly said the US administration is “taking its own decisions and we’re taking ours.”

Some of the researchers, like Guikema, were born and raised in the United States. Others are Canadians who worked abroad and are now returning home.

Despite the departures, US universities remain among the world’s top-ranked institutions, with MIT, Stanford, and Harvard in the top five of the QS Universities Rankings.