On Feb. 10, 2026, France announced late last week that it would be awarding funds to 46 scientists as part of a high-profile initiative to recruit foreign researchers to the country with the promise of greater academic freedom. Almost all of them were previously at US institutions.

The more than €30-million Choose France for Science initiative, launched last April, is just one of a slew of European initiatives that aim to bring in research talent disaffected by changes elsewhere. These include the European Union’s Choose Europe initiative, which is currently supported by nearly €900 million (US$1.1 billion) in research funding.

The French programme will see 41 of the 46 recruits relocate to France from the United States. Eight of these researchers worked at Columbia University in New York City, which last year saw hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of its research grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

The award recipients include Zhongkai Tao, a mathematician studying the structures of waves and matter in physics. Previously at the University of California, Berkeley, Tao has now taken up his grant at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies (Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, or IHES) in Paris.

Astrophysicist Kartik Sheth, who was associate chief scientist at NASA until he was fired by the agency during mass layoffs last year, has also been funded by the initiative. He will take up a three-year position at Aix-Marseille University.

Under Trump’s second presidency, US researchers have experienced grant cuts, the dismantling of science-funding agencies and increased federal control over universities. US foreign aid and awards to international collaborators have also been terminated. When announcing the call last year, Élisabeth Borne, then French minister for higher education and research, said that France would offer a “refuge” to researchers as “science and research face unprecedented threats worldwide”.

Of the 46 award recipients, 19 are US nationals, 13 are French and 14 are originally from a variety of other nations.