AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Brain drain - smaller countries feel this often. Their high performers leave, looking for opportunities in bigger countries like the U.S. But now it seems the tables could be turning. Adrian Ma and Darian Woods with The Indicator From Planet Money have this report.
DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: Armando Rosario-Lebron has been into bugs ever since he was a kid in Puerto Rico.
ARMANDO ROSARIO-LEBRON: It's one of those things where it's the closest thing to studying, like, a little alien sometimes.
ADRIAN MA, BYLINE: Aww, little Armando.
WOODS: (Laughter).
MA: Well, little Armando grew up to be big Armando, who actually works with bugs for a living. On the side, he consults for film and TV.
WOODS: Armando's full-time job, though, is working at the Smithsonian Institution. There, he's a biological science technician. He's also a union vice president, representing many federal workers involved with border biosecurity. He explains the importance of entomology at the border like this.
ROSARIO-LEBRON: Imagine a banana begins in Costa Rica, and it arrives at a port of entry.
MA: These bananas are inspected by a Customs and Border Protection officer who might have been trained by an entomologist because the wrong insects getting into the U.S. can be economically crushing.
WOODS: That could be hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the - to U.S. farmers, is that right?
ROSARIO-LEBRON: Potentially billions.
WOODS: Potentially billions.
ROSARIO-LEBRON: Yeah.
WOODS: But recently with job cuts, resignation offers and funding freezes, Armando was wondering whether he wants to be working in the U.S.
MA: A few months ago, Armando applied for a Ph.D program in the U.K., and in March, he was accepted. But he was also torn about whether to take the offer.
WOODS: Overseas universities, hospitals and labs are rubbing their hands at all these enthusiastic, smart people like Armando suddenly considering leaving the U.S. Kevin Smith is the president and CEO of University Health Network in Canada.
MA: Kevin says a few months ago, he was hearing from his researchers that something unusual was happening.
KEVIN SMITH: All of a sudden, the phone started ringing and saying, hey, I'm kind of interested in what opportunities you have. It was a sizable shift. I would say it was, you know, 5- to 10x increase.
WOODS: Five to 10 times.
SMITH: And what was most notable is where they were from, among the finest academic organizations in the United States - Harvard, Stanford, NIH, National Cancer Institute, Hopkins.
WOODS: The NIH has been blocking thousands of grant applications and has threatened billions of dollars of further health sciences funding if scientists weren't asking the right questions.
SMITH: For example, some in vaccine science who felt like maybe they'd have less access to grants than they had in the past.
WOODS: So Kevin thought, there may be an opportunity here. He spoke with his senior leadership team and board.
SMITH: We stepped back and said, this is a profound opportunity that we have not seen, at least in my career.
WOODS: They came up with a plan to work with philanthropists and other funders to recruit 100 early-career scientists to their hospital system.
MA: Kevin says around 400 people have already formally inquired. They span cancer researchers, neuroscientists, experts in organ transplants.
SMITH: Scientists are sending a message. They want to be in an environment where they can ask curiosity-driven questions that are of importance to them, and they want to be able to disseminate the results of those findings.
WOODS: We asked both the NIH and the White House if they were concerned. The NIH responded that it is committed to fostering a vibrant biomedical research workforce, and White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the Trump administration had been reviewing the previous administration's projects, identifying waste and realigning research spending to maintain America's innovative dominance.
MA: As for Armando, the entomologist, he reflected on all the chaos that he's been seeing and he decided, yeah, he's going to take that Ph.D. offer in the U.K. He actually moves in September.
WOODS: Darian Woods.
MA: Adrian Ma, NPR News.
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