The best and brightest young scientists are looking beyond the U.S. as cuts hit home

NBC News

07-05-2025

Jack Castelli had it all figured out.
The University of Washington doctoral student had spent the past three years developing new gene-editing techniques that could spur immunity to the virus that causes AIDS. Early testing in mice showed promising results. His research group hoped it could develop into a treatment, or even a cure, for HIV.
Castelli, who is Canadian, saw two career paths after his graduation this spring: He could join a U.S. biotech company, or he could find a postdoctoral position at a U.S. university or research laboratory.
'This is where the money is at and where all the clinical trials are happening,' Castelli said, making the U.S. 'the only place in my mind I could push that forward.'
Then the Trump administration's science cuts hit.
And so, on a rainy late April day in Seattle, Castelli stood at a lectern before his friends and family and defended his doctoral thesis — about using stem cells to express antibodies against HIV — with his scientific life at a crossroads.
Should he join a lab in his native Canada? Accept recruiting calls to a European university? A Chinese biotech company? They were all possibilities now, and his U.S. visa is likely to expire in a few months' time.
'I have a personal interest in Jack getting the best opportunity for himself, and as much as I'd love to say the U.S. is the place, I can't necessarily say that right now,' said Jennifer Adair, who was Castelli's principal investigator at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, a partner institute to the university.
Castelli speaks three languages fluently and completed two internships while earning his doctoral degree. He is a generous colleague and an exceptional scientist, Adair said.
But his uncertain future is hardly unique. The Trump administration's slowdown in science funding — which stalled thousands of grants at the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, among other organizations — has left U.S.-based scientists and researchers scrambling to find homes for promising work that could lead to medical treatments and cures. Now many are looking abroad. As of May, Castelli had not made a decision on whether he'll stay in the U.S.
The slowdown has forced the University of Washington, a top public university for biomedical research, to implement a hiring freeze, travel restrictions, class size reductions and furloughs. Some departments are pushing students to graduate sooner than expected. In a court filing, a university representative said it funds about 3,000 researchers through NIH grants.
Interviews with more than 20 graduate students, faculty members and university administrators at UW describe a research hub thrown into chaos. Other institutions have made similarly drastic moves, according to court filings in lawsuits that aim to thwart the cuts.
Many of those interviewed said a generation of scientists — and the innovations their research would bring — could be decimated.
'Really talented people are not able to get jobs; other really talented people are able to get jobs, but they're choosing not to take them because of the craziness,' said David Baker, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine, who won the Nobel Prize in 2024 for protein research. 'Why would you stay in a country where there's not really an obvious commitment to science, when you could go somewhere else and be better funded and not worry about what you can read in the news or what email you're going to get?'
In an April 14 court filing, the university's vice provost for research, Mari Ostendorf, said the campus mood had dimmed.
'Faculty and staff don't know if their funding will be cut, if their research will be terminated, whether they will be able to attend conferences, or even whether they will continue to have jobs,' Ostendorf wrote. 'Funding gaps have forced researchers to abandon studies, miss deadlines, or lose key personnel.'
A spokesperson for the National Institutes of Health declined to comment.
And there may be even more funding lost in the future due to Trump administration decisions. After a protest at the University of Washington campus Monday over the war in the Gaza Strip, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, announced that it was part of a task force reviewing UW's response to the demonstration.
About 30 people were arrested after occupying a campus building Monday, according to the university, which condemned the protest in a statement and described it as 'dangerous' and 'violent.'
The Trump administration previously canceled federal grants at Columbia University during a similar review and has said Harvard University will receive no new grants until it makes a series of reforms, including changes to policies about protests and antisemitism.
Although the review was only announced Tuesday, the administration's Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said in a news release that 'the university must do more to deter future violence and guarantee that Jewish students have a safe and productive learning environment,' adding that it expected UW 'to follow up with enforcement actions and policy changes.'
A university science laboratory operates like a small factory where workers are churning out ideas, research and data, rather than furniture or light bulbs. Traditionally, these labs' primary customers are federal science agencies, like NIH or NSF.
Think of a lab's principal investigator as akin to a company president. In the grant process, they must convince the government or private funders to buy their product — unique research — and then pay graduate students in wages and tuition.
'I'm like a small-business owner,' said Adair, who recently left Seattle to serve as a professor and associate director at the UMass Chan Medical School's gene therapy center. 'I have to pay myself. I have to pay my staff. I have to find the money to do the research.'
In the first few months of 2025, funding for NIH grants has lagged the year prior by at least $2.3 billion, according to STAT News. NIH has also canceled grant applications as it targets politically disfavored topics like infectious diseases, according to critics.
That funding slowdown has forced many principal investigators to reduce their lab's size.
'We've had to make personnel cuts,' said Alex Greninger, a professor of laboratory medicine at UW Medicine, adding that he had been forced to rescind a job offer to a postdoctoral researcher from China who had been doing research in his lab for nearly three years.
It cost the researcher her visa, he said. Another member of his lab left to take a job at a Chinese gene synthesis firm. Several have seen placements rescinded at other institutions.
'This is the first year where people didn't get into graduate school,' Greninger said, about technicians in his lab who have completed undergraduate degrees, adding that they had done 'everything right.'
Dr. Anna Wald, the head of allergy and infectious diseases at UW Medicine, the university's school of medicine and hospital system, said several principal investigators in her department cut part of their own salaries to keep their staffers on.
Meanwhile, Adair paid out of her own pocket to send students to conferences that could advance their careers.
The uncertainty has also simply wasted time, some said.
'Everybody is spending a lot of time dealing with changes in how the university operates,' said Jakob Von Moltke, an associate professor of immunology at the University of Washington. 'Everything just functions less efficiently and there's less innovation.'
With so many professors uncertain about funding, many first-year graduate students seeking a lab are struggling to find positions. At some UW departments, first-year graduate students often rotate between labs for several months before they select a home for the following four or five years.
'A lot of people are scrambling to find a lab to settle into and a lot of faculty are unable to commit to taking students, or backing out of commitments,' said Dustin Mullaney, a first-year doctoral student studying molecular and cellular biology.
Still, many first-years consider themselves lucky — at least they got in. Most UW departments have reduced upcoming graduate classes by 25%-50%, according to court filings in a case filed by 16 state attorneys general aiming to restore the flow of NIH funding.
'I think we are going to lose most of a generation of scientists,' said Henry Mangapalli, a first-year doctoral student in the laboratory medicine department.
Meanwhile, doctoral students nearing graduation say they're being recruited to move abroad.
Kristin Weinstein, a fourth-year doctoral student in the department of immunology working on autoimmune research, planned to graduate next year, find a postdoctoral research position at a U.S. university and eventually become a professor.
But now, faced with hiring freezes and shrinking labs, Weinstein said she's considering moving her family, including an infant son, out of the U.S. Before UW's austerity actions, Weinstein booked travel to Switzerland so she could present her research at the World Immune Regulation Meeting 2025, a key conference in her field.
'What it turned into was a lot of informational interviewing,' Weinstein said. 'I talked to faculty who are in Australia, faculty who are in Germany, faculty who are in Luxembourg and Denmark. … There was active recruiting happening.'
Baker, the Nobel winner who directs the Institute for Protein Design, said that more than 15 of his graduate students and postdoctoral researchers were aiming for new roles overseas. Meanwhile, other students have seen their research upended.
Nelson Niu, a fourth-year doctoral student in mathematics, said he had planned to spend six years teaching students and completing his thesis, a timeline sanctioned by his department. But on March 11 he received an email from his department chair saying the policy had changed for fourth-year students because of new financial realities, and people like Niu were now only guaranteed five years of funding.
'Jarring,' Niu said of the notice; now he'd have to pack two years of study into one.
Arjun Kumar, a third-year doctoral student studying why T cells lose their ability to fight off tumors, was working with National Cancer Institute researchers to potentially apply some of his research findings to a type of treatment pioneered there.
But Kumar said he lost weeks of time after the NIH placed a temporary communications freeze on federal researchers this winter.
'They were already working on key experiments for us and they already had data they couldn't send us because they couldn't email us,' Kumar said.
Later, Kumar learned the NCI researchers no longer had the bandwidth to help.
'It was an exciting collaboration that was snuffed out in the moment,' Kumar said.
Washington is one of 16 states suing the NIH and HHS over its slowdown in grant funding. A judge will hear arguments Thursday as the state attorneys general seek a preliminary injunction.
Meanwhile, the pressure on scientists to leave the U.S. is only increasing. On Monday, the European Union launched a drive to attract scientists to Europe, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a commitment of $566 million to attract U.S. talent and 'make Europe a magnet for researchers.'
'It has been really challenging to my identity as an American citizen to think about having to leave the country to pursue my career,' Weinstein said. 'It feels like the American dream is dead.'