Scientific brain drain – what happens when the pipes are clogged?

Scientific brain drain – what happens when the pipes are clogged?

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A colleague at my institution recently invited a scientist with a “foreign-sounding” name to deliver a seminar. Foreign, yes, but not to my ears – immediately I knew that this was an Israeli. As fate would have it, not only did I recognise the name as Israeli, but I recognised the name – and remembered the face.

It turns out that the invited speaker, now a faculty member and independent researcher at Brown University in Rhode Island, did his undergraduate studies with me a quarter of a century ago (that sounds awful!) in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University. While this was certainly an interesting twist of fate – small world, smaller scientific world – it puts the spotlight on the issue dubbed as “the brain drain”.