A top cancer specialist left the US and returned to his native China in the wake of President Donald Trump’s funding cuts, part of a wider exodus of scientific talent.
Feng Gensheng of the University of California San Diego moved to North America in the 1980s and is a world expert in tumor immunology. Beijing has been keen to attract diaspora researchers back to China since before Trump’s second term — scientists are offered financial incentives, and the number returning tripled between 2010 and 2021 — but funding cuts appear to have accelerated the process.
European and Australian universities are also keen to attract US researchers whose funding streams are threatened: Health and climate funding initiatives have been particularly badly hit.
