‘We’re no longer attracting top talent’: the brain drain killing American science | US news

In April 2025, less than three months after Donald Trump returned to the White House, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put out its latest public health alert on so-called “superbugs”, strains of bacteria resistant to antibiotics.

These drug-resistant germs, the CDC warned, are responsible for more than 3m infections in the US each year, claiming the lives of up to 48,000 Americans.

Globally, the largely untreatable pathogens contribute annually to almost 5m deaths, and health experts fear that unless urgent steps are taken they could become a leading killer, surpassing even cancer, by 2050.

“We’re in a war against bacteria,” said Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest funder of biomedical research. He is on the frontlines of that war against superbugs; the NIH lab in which he works is driving what he described as “high-risk, high-reward research”.

But over the past year, the battlefield has toughened. Under the Trump administration, Morgan, 33, and thousands of other young American scientists like him have grappled with wave after wave of disruptions.

Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired.

Morgan’s research has been rattled by multibillion-dollar cuts in NIH contracts that make it impossible for labs to maintain their equipment. They have the choice of paying exorbitant maintenance fees, or giving up on experiments.

Amid the maelstrom, young and early-career scientists like Morgan are among the hardest hit. His own future is now in doubt.

In the normal trajectory of a life in science, Morgan would be planning to set up his own laboratory conducting groundbreaking research designed to win the war on superbugs. But with an ongoing hiring freeze at NIH, his options are limited.

“Right now there’s no way even to apply to start your own lab at NIH, no matter how good you are, or how critical your work,” he says.

Morgan’s predicament has led him to step up as a steward at a new union for young NIH researchers formed under the umbrella of the UAW. Its almost 5,000 members are organizing against the Trump administration’s assault on American science.

The chaos that has descended on NIH over the past year has led Morgan to fear for his future, the future of his craft, and ultimately the fight against superbugs.

“We’re making progress, we have a lot of really cool new innovations that could defeat the infections,” he said. “But if we stop doing the work, we lose the war.”

A similar story to Morgan’s could be told by tens of thousands of other young scientists throughout NIH and across numerous US universities experiencing federal funding squeezes. More than 10,000 post-doctoral experts in scientific and related fields were lost to the federal workforce last year, according to Science.

The magazine looked at 14 research agencies, including NIH, and found that the number of employees departing outstripped new hires by 11 to one.

The brain drain is prompting existential fears that American science, a powerhouse of the US economy and of global public health, is being deprived of its lifeblood. The source of young researchers – the next generation of scientists who are the fount of new ideas and innovation – is being throttled.

“The talent pool is developed by letting young people flourish among like-minded, excited scientists,” said John Prensner, a pediatric brain cancer doctor who leads a research laboratory at the University of Michigan. “If that ceases, then that intellectual discovery, that drive to make the next great insight into cancer or other challenges, will be planted in another country’s soil.”

The NIH drives scientific progress globally across biomedical and behavioral sciences, including defenses against infectious diseases and possible future pandemics. It pushes at the frontier of new therapies geared to the genetic makeup of individual patients, and can claim numerous breakthroughs in cancer treatment, vaccinations and much more.

Without the NIH driving innovation at its core, the US would cease to have the largest biomedical ecosystem in the world.

‘Wiping out the next generation of scientists’

Emma Bay Dickinson, a 27-year-old postgrad researcher in infectious diseases, is a specialist in zika, the largely mosquito-born virus that can cause birth defects. Her longer-term ambition is to help find a way to protect the world against viruses that have the potential to evolve into the next pandemic, such as avian flu.

For now, though, the US will miss out on her skills. The Trump administration’s funding cuts began to hit last year just when, as a postgraduate research fellow at NIH in Washington DC, she was hunting for her next position.

“My classmates applying in the US were getting rejected, and were being told that the funding cuts meant there was too much uncertainty to offer them jobs.”

Dickinson, who is queer, was discouraged by Trump’s animus against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) which was used as a justification for many of the grant cuts. She was also dismayed by the blatant censorship imposed by the administration.

Applicants for federal research funding were forced to filter their proposals to remove a banned list of key words across DEI, climate, vaccines and other study areas deemed undesirable by Trump.

So Dickinson redirected her energies abroad. She began applying for posts in Spain and Germany, in the end landing a spot at a prestigious program at a Barcelona infectious disease research institution.

For the foreseeable future, she sees her future in Europe. “It’s important for me to feel I can be myself in my science, and that’s just not possible right now in the US,” she said.

She is not alone. A growing number of young American scientists are quitting the country for positions in Europe, Australia or Asia. Universities across Europe have been swift to exploit the opportunity, openly enticing young Americans to join the exodus and seek “scientific asylum” with them.

The response has been overwhelming. Aix-Marseille University, which launched one of the first European programs to lure people from the US, was inundated by hundreds of applications from early-career researchers hoping to flee the US.

The outflow of young scientists has been exacerbated by deep cuts to NIH training programs, which acts as a breeding ground of the US’s future top scientists. At least 50 training programs, targeted at undergraduates through early-career lab researchers, have been shut down under the Trump administration.

An NIH program officer spoke to the Guardian about the impact of the training cuts, but asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. “Trainees are the most vulnerable people in science,” the officer said.

“They are the ones with new ideas, where a lot of our hope resides. Now they are losing their minds with worry about what comes next. They are desperate for advice on how to stay in science when there are no grants available.”

The officer added: “If you delay and terminate training grants, it’s like a snowball effect. Eventually you start wiping out our next generation of scientists.”

Adding to the problem of young talent leaving the country, the flow of early-career researchers entering US scientific labs from around the world is also shrinking as a result of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Scientists from abroad are often at the forefront of US innovation – last year, half of the US Nobel prize winners in science subjects were immigrants.

In September, Trump imposed a $100,000 fee on new applications for H-1B visas for foreign skilled workers, a move that makes coming to the US prohibitively expensive for most researchers. Then in January the administration suspended immigrant visa processing to people from 75 countries.

Add to that the nightly TV images beamed around the world of ICE raids on US city streets, and a clear message has been sent out that America does not welcome newcomers.

Jennifer Jones, director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the international reputation of US science had been damaged in ways that could take years to repair.

“We are no longer attracting top talent from around the world. Why would you want to come to a place where you know you could be threatened with deportation at any moment?”

‘Leaving discoveries on the table’

Emily Hilliard, the press secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, told the Guardian that NIH was “deeply committed to providing opportunities for early career scientists by restoring the agency’s culture and rebuilding public trust”. She disputed the idea that the pipeline of young scientists was being reduced, calling such claims “baseless and intended to fearmonger”.

“NIH will continue to attract and recruit the best and brightest, strengthen the US biomedical workforce, and deliver cures and solutions for Americans,” she said.

But NIH staff continue to view the future with trepidation. Jenna Norton, a program director at NIH, said she had been surprised by how quickly the landscape had changed.

She was placed on indefinite paid leave from the agency in November, without being given any explanation. Earlier this month Norton filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the Trump administration had unlawfully retaliated against her for openly criticising Trump’s cuts to grants, funding and staffing at NIH.

Speaking in her personal capacity, Norton told the Guardian: “I was not expecting this administration to come at science as broadly and as quickly as they have.”

In the long run, the damage done to the next generation of researchers threatens to harm not just scientific knowledge itself, but also the US economy. NIH funding supports basic biomedical research out of which new drugs and other commercial spin-offs emerge.

As such, it provides the foundations for the almost trillion-dollar US pharmaceutical industry. A 2018 study of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the six years to 2016 found that all of them had been developed out of early basic research funded by NIH.

“We are leaving discoveries on the table,” warned Donna Ginther, an economics professor at the University of Kansas who is an authority on the science labor market. “Those discoveries are the ones that in 10, 20 years will contribute to economic growth, improved health, human longevity. That’s what we are choking off.”