U.S. Research Decline Sparks Brain Drain Threat
Ulrich “Uli” Mueller was born in Germany and was pursuing a PhD from the University of Cologne when he came to Princeton University to perform some collaborative research in the 1980s.
“The welcoming I received in this country was just amazing and I immediately didn’t feel like a foreigner,” says Mueller, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Biology at Johns Hopkins University. After earning his doctorate and working at a Swiss institute for a few years, he opted to return to the U.S. to continue his scientific career and has become a U.S. citizen. Mueller came to JohnsHopkins in 2016. “America just provided the dynamic environment where I could do things that I just couldn’t do anywhere else,” he says.
Mueller is a globally recognized expert on hearing loss and brain development who focuses on translating basic research findings into treatment options for patients. His lab explores the genetic components of the ear’s specialized sensory cells to better understand hereditary forms of hearing loss. The work is crucial: Thousands of hearing-impaired babies are born each year and millions of older adults experience debilitating hearing loss as they age.
Since the system of U.S. government-supported research was first established during World War II and the immediate postwar years, millions of foreign-born scientists and researchers have likewise been drawn to these shores. According to a report by the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, foreign-born individuals made up 19% of all STEM workers and 43% of doctorate-level scientists and engineers in the U.S. in 2021, the latest year of data in the report. But there are indications this long-term trend could change.
A March survey of scientists by the journal Nature found that more than 75% of the 1,600 respondents said they were considering leaving the country in response to the research disruptions. “And the world is shocked,” Mueller says. “I travel a lot, and nobody can understand it, because fundamentally science is apolitical.”
We asked Mueller for his further thoughts on this potential American brain drain.
First of all, there has been a very close relationship between the government and the research institutes with the foundation of the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, which has not been duplicated in the same way or at the same level anywhere else in the world. This has really pushed American science and gave the researchers an extremely solid foundation to conduct high-level research. Secondly, what’s unique about the American research environment is the idea of a melting pot.
In my laboratory, we have a world map hanging on the wall. We put in pins on the location where the fellows in my laboratory come from. It is amazing and gives you a sense of the diversity that drives our research. The brightest minds from around the world are drawn to conduct research here. They enrich our research and drive discoveries that benefit America, and they also learn about American culture and values.
When I was much younger, even if you wanted to build a scientific career in Europe, it was kind of expected that at least after your PhD you would go to America for a while to see how research is done and then bring that understanding back home. Creating this opportunity to bring in the best people, each of them bringing their own special background and perspectives, leads to the creation of dynamics in a laboratory which you can’t get if everybody thinks the same way. And I would add that another strength of American research is that the system was built on merit. Everybody has a chance to succeed. I came from Germany, which had a more traditional system where there are these prominent professors and then there was everybody else. It could be a difficult system to work in.
We could not fill our research positions with just Americans. We wouldn’t have enough people. And even if people only come here for a few years, they enrich the science that gets done in this country with their unique backgrounds and expertise. For example, Spain has a long tradition in neuroanatomy. This goes back 120 or years or so to Santiago Ramón y Cajal, their first Nobel laureate. Their visiting researchers bring expertise to this country and help us train people here. Different countries have different strengths, and the whole American system thrives on this input of new ideas from different cultures.
The biggest winner right now is China. China puts huge amounts of money into research, particularly in AI and biomedical fields. And they are the big winners because that’s where the future is happening. Scientific research is becoming more expensive than ever, and countries that put the resources toward it in a stable manner stand to gain.
And the second winner is, of course, Europe, which regains strengths. The European Union has earmarked at least half a billion dollars to recruit people back. And different countries are individually shaping their own recruitment programs. I’ve been actively recruited, as has pretty much every European I know who has reached some prominence here.
I’m a U.S. citizen. But am I tempted? Sure. I’m not going to run away right now, but if America continues on the path it is on, I have to consider it. My whole life is centered around science. If I cannot conduct my research here anymore, I must look for other opportunities, right?
For starters, we will have fewer medical breakthroughs. The second thing is that the Chinese and Europeans will be awarded key patents in the future. We will miss out on the economic benefits from the discoveries made in other countries. It will also affect the pharma industry. Pharma fundamentally doesn’t care if the research is done in the U.S. or in China. They can still get access to it, but the economic activity and revenues may shift away from these shores. The multinational pharma companies don’t have to be here if they can buy their research from China. Finally, science doesn’t happen independently from society. If you have certain medical needs or priorities, you can define what the research priorities are. If you outsource all your science to other countries, you can’t do that anymore.
Uli Mueller
https://hub.jhu.edu/2025/05/21/us-research-brain-drain-uli-mueller/