On Oct. 19, 2026, the Associated Press has reported that when the Trump administration began upending U.S. scientific research last year, dismantling the federal grant-giving process and attempting to exert more political influence over what projects get funded, foreign universities saw an opportunity. They adopted programs to lure U.S. researchers abroad, promising more stable streams of funding and academic freedom.

Since then, many have taken the bait. While there is no way to quantify the overall change across the nation, scientists, researchers and professional groups say the shift is clear, unprecedented and concerning.

“You can almost talk to any vice president for research at a university and they will tell you of one or two top faculty that they’ve lost,” said Tobin Smith, senior vice president of government relations and public policy for the Association of American Universities.

But more than half of American states have lost scientists to recruitment programs in other countries, according to an April report from the Business for Federal Research Funding Coalition. Last March, early-career biomedical scientists were about 20 percentage points less likely to say they would “now” stay in the U.S., compared to their recollection of how they felt six months earlier. And physics Ph.D. graduates in 2025 left the U.S. at the highest rate in 30 years, according to the American Institute of Physics.

Countries including Canada, France, Germany, Belgium and Finland are touting their recruits from U.S. institutions, a disturbing and surprising development, scientists say, for a country that far and away leads the world in Nobel prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry.

International researchers who were drawn to the U.S. for its reputation as a global leader in science are also seeking different places to do their work. Forty percent of the U.S. science Nobel Prizes were won by immigrants. Omar Yaghi, a 2025 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, left his post at the University of California, Berkeley this year to direct an artificial intelligence lab at China’s Tsinghua University.

Scientists who have moved away and those still in the U.S. are worried about what’s left behind. They say the next generation of scientists may struggle with fewer graduate programs, money and mentorship — and it could take a decade or longer for the U.S. scientific enterprise to truly feel those effects. Major research institutions accepted 15% fewer applicants for fall 2026 doctoral programs compared to last year, according to admissions data collected by the Association of American Universities.