Mass migration of US scientists to Europe

"According to data from the European Research Council (ERC), the European Union’s premier funding agency for basic research, applications from the United States for its starting, consolidator and advanced grants to individual researchers — worth up to €2.5 million apiece over five years — rose by 120% in its most recent round of calls, compared with an overall rise in applications of 17% (see ‘Choosing Europe’)."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00362-w
@science

load all comments

reabsorbthelight 5 points 8 months ago

Advanced Grants — for established principal investigators — saw the greatest leap in US applications, with the number nearly quintupling from 23 to 114.

So 114 applications for one? It would be important to see the raw numbers because even 10x of 114 is miniscule.

https://nces.ed.gov/...

840k full-time professors at US universities. And Europe would probably get the lower tiers because why would a tenured US professor give up their tenure to move to Europe.

So article cites 114 for one grant. Let's assume 100x that, so 11,400 professors coming over. That's a little over 1% of professors

save

path: 0 22135901, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 3

mapto 3 points 8 months ago

@reabsorbthelight an average full-time professor does not cover the requirements for an advanced grants. That's why an average full-time professor doesn't get several millions of funding.

save

path: 0 22135901 22136844, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 2

reabsorbthelight 1 point 8 months ago

If so, that would effect the statistics and shift the effect higher. For my understanding, could you estimate the effect of the grants and the extent of the drain?

save

path: 0 22135901 22136844 22139135, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1

mapto 2 points 8 months ago

@reabsorbthelight to give estimates, we'd need to see if the increased applications lead to increased awards to US researchers (which is quite probable). One of these grants leads to about a dozen new hires, and it's very probable that senior researchers would want to pull their teams along.

save

path: 0 22135901 22136844 22139135 22141917, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0