Top researchers leave USA for the Netherlands (in Dutch)

https://www.nwo.nl/nieuws/eerste-internationale-wetenschappers-via-het-tulp-fonds-naar-nederland

320 258 16 days ago

goldenarm2• 16 days ago

The US is accidentally conducting Operation Paperclip but in reverse. Who will benefit the most from it, China or Europe ?

amarant• 16 days ago

Probably Europe. Seems more attractive for researchers. China is probably too different to be attractive for most Americans.

namenotrequired• 16 days ago

Even if not a single researcher goes from the US to China, it may still benefit them

em5002• 16 days ago

It's not too different for ethnic Chinese researchers, of which there are a lot in American STEM departments.

est313• 16 days ago

China is not very immigration friendly to non-han folks, but I guess chinese researchers won't make it to the US and this already will have a great effect on the chinese economy.

Europe is in its own set of problems and it is not in the same situation that US used to be after WW2 (only major economy not affected by bombing).

Europe's problems:

* active major war in Ukraine (lasting longer than Axis/Soviet war in WW2)

* energy supply issues (unlike US it's not energy sufficient and the places that supply it with energy are involved with wars)

* a wall of people aging away from employment and into doctor's and hospital waiting rooms (forcing less investment into research and roads/bridges/railway, more towards stabilizing pensions, healthcare)

* major pieces of the european export economy are being replaced by China (eg chinese car brands eating the lunch of european car brands).

tasuki2• 16 days ago

China is not very immigration friendly to non-han folks

What do you mean? I've never been to China, but know quite a few non-han white Europeans who lived there for both shorter and longer periods of time. Some studied, others worked there.

jasonhong• 16 days ago

Whether China is immigration friendly or not is debatable. However, here's a recent announcement from last week:

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Omar M. Yaghi joins Tsinghua University full-time https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1244/14984.htm

VWWHFSfQ3• 16 days ago

Europe is in its own set of problems and it is not in the same situation that US used to be after WW2 (only major economy not affected by bombing).

Both Japan and South Korea were equally devastated and yet they managed to build world-class technology industries in the subsequent decades. I think the problems with Europe and the EU are a lot deeper than that.

dataflow6• 16 days ago

Europe's problems: [...]

Would it be silly to add "general lack of air conditioning" to that list? I imagine at some point it inevitably stops being a joke and starts being a real problem. Have we reached that point yet? [1] [2]

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-frances-june-heatwave...

[2] https://www.dw.com/en/heat-wave-european-countries-report-37...

sajithdilshan• 16 days ago

Europe is not immigration friendly as well if you don't speak the native language, of course one could live in an English speaking bubble, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be in Academia.

drnick12• 16 days ago

You forgot, amomg others, increasingly non-white popation due to laughable immigration policies; absurd environmental policies that result in high energy prices; red tape and high taxes in every aspect of life.

bergen2• 16 days ago

Is it an accident though? This seems very deliberate

goldenarm2• 16 days ago

Maybe the current administration underestimates the impact of public research, and thinks Silicon Valley appeared out of nowhere.

usrusr• 16 days ago

Not sure if accidentally is the correct term, given the anti-intellectual platform

fhe• 16 days ago

There are any number of smaller region/states that are already benefiting. Singapore comes to mind. Leading labs are all setting up in Singapore and both 1) internally-transferring their previously US-based talents on work visa to Singapore, and 2) using Singapore as a base for Asia hires, mostly notably from China.

adam_beck• 16 days ago

Top researchers in what?

moffkalast• 16 days ago

Top. Men.

283042834092342• 16 days ago

And top women: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/07/07/opeens-mochten-we-woord...

Cancer researchers, climatechange, food production, astrophysics, democracy, mental health, Alzheimers, ...

Basically all over the board. But don't worry - you folks still have a president that understands sports really..... REALLY well. /s

karmakurtisaani2• 16 days ago

Who?

pastor_williams• 16 days ago

From what I can tell

AI, quantum, vaccines, cancer, Alzheimer's, mental health, nuclear energy, climate, food security, astrophysics, democratic resilience

There isn't a full list of fields or researchers because of privacy or not all researchers have told their current institutions about the change.

mono442• 16 days ago

Isn't much of the science work just taking money for doing basically nothing? I don't think that is a loss for the us.

victorbjorklund• 16 days ago

Yea, exactly. You should send all your top scientists to Europe. Great idea to get rid of them. Totally just dragging down your country. Send them to Europe.

zipy1242• 16 days ago

No. It is for research that wouldn't be funded by companies, since it is either too risky or has too long of a time-horizon. If all academic research was removed from the world you would notice a vast stagnation in technological progress. This can be confirmed by looking at what technologies have come from this process, and what private research built upon public research.

pjc502• 16 days ago

Hacker News really isn't what it used to be, huh.

karmakurtisaani2• 16 days ago

Anti-science crowd found their way here as well.

mrguyorama5• 16 days ago

These people have always been here.

They were the ones complaining that we were "brainwashed" when we decried Trump in 2016. They were the ones complaining we were overreacting to him being elected again. They were the ones cheering for DOGE while we pointed out how obviously stupid it was.

Now they feel safe to be loud and proud of their ignorance.

lefra• 16 days ago

It's not for doing nothing, it's for fooling around at the edge of knowledge. Sometimes, very useful stuff emerges.

estearum• 16 days ago

For real. How much more do we need to spend to learn that plants crave Brawndo?

skeledrew2• 16 days ago

"Science work" is NOT doing nothing. All the modern conveniences we have today came through such work, which usually go for long stretches of time before payoff.

MITSardine3• 16 days ago

You presumably spent 15 or so years in school to learn things of which many only have very indirect applications, and at most a small minority directly applied to your career.

Should we similarly get rid of mandatory education? Most of it is useless after all.

beng-nl• 16 days ago

You are motivating me to get enough reputation points to be allowed to downvote.

cdash• 16 days ago

This title is such clickbait. All the article talks about is a Dutch fund created to recruit scientists and they have successfully recruited them. At 1 million euros per head.

Forgeties792• 16 days ago

Seems accurate enough to me. That’s not a ton of money to uproot your life over tbh. Shows there’s willingness to leave with a little bit of incentive.

DrSiemer• 16 days ago

That money is for the research, not salary

JSR_FDED2• 16 days ago

They have the first 34 researchers, all from top universities and institutes. That’s a major achievement, because as the article says, every researcher brings new knowledge as well as a whole international network with them.

Cthulhu_8• 16 days ago

Exactly; the biggest company in the Netherlands and its products (ASML and high end lithography machines), is built on top of the works of only a handful of researchers. The US nuclear weapons and space programs were similarly built on top of researchers they got from Europe. This is very much NOT a numbers game, and I want to believe top researchers rate their work and the benefit of humanity higher than a country, especially if that country is backsliding.

VWWHFSfQ3• 16 days ago

At 1 million euros per head.

Over 5 years...

BeetleB6• 16 days ago

Which still a great salary and competitive with the US, in academia.

cactusplant73742• 16 days ago

Hopefully it isn't lithography researchers.

JSR_FDED2• 16 days ago

Why hopefully?

cactusplant73742• 16 days ago

Because we need them to compete with ASML.

luma• 16 days ago

This reads more like The Netherlands hopes to bribe US researchers into moving to the Netherlands.

vincnetas• 16 days ago

why do you call paying someone legally a "bribe" ?

ericmay3• 16 days ago

In the US we sometimes use the term “bribe” in morally neutral or even positive situations.

It just means giving someone money or a different incentive to convince them to do something they weren’t going to do or were undecided but considering doing and the extra incentive is the catalyst for making the decision.

We also have the legal concept of a bribe but the OP probably wasn’t using it in the legal sense - I.e. accusing the Netherlands of doing something illegal.

koiueo• 16 days ago

Paying government to make laws allowing you to gain extra profits – lobbying (not a bribe)

Paying mandatory but arbitrary amount to a restaurant on top of your bill – tips (not a hidden fee).

Paying someone an official salary – a bribe.

American logic

floatrock• 16 days ago

right, the proper term is "incentive", "tax break", or "economic development fund"

Cthulhu_8• 16 days ago

I for one am still waiting for US tech companies to bribe me to come work for them.

tgv• 16 days ago

Then the US used to bribe our researchers. It's tit-for-tat in this case.

blueaquilae• 16 days ago

Experts in flies reproduction leave fro Netherlands.

bergen2• 16 days ago

The US once was proud of its scientific achievements, now parts of it replaced that with being very proud of their ignorance

drstewart5• 16 days ago

I thought Europe was proud and independent and completely decoupled from the US, why do you need US scientists suddenly? Hmm...

mrguyorama5• 16 days ago

You mean the thing that held Screwworm at bay for decades and kept our beef prices low? That we will now need to spend $Billions re-curtailing because we don't have as much of the capability to do that anymore?

jesdo• 16 days ago

Great initiative, and good to see that it has an effect. I'm a bit sceptical about the available funds. 1 million over 5 years is a nice starting package (4+ PhD students), but the availability of overall research grant money in the Netherlands has been under pressure for years and is difficult to acquire. Researchers moving here may find it difficult to acquire further grant money compared to US, at least in CS.

Cthulhu_8• 16 days ago

It'll be on top of any other grants and funding available for research though.

doctorwho423• 16 days ago

Any how much available funding is there in the EU?

One of the reasons that so many researchers come to the US, even with our decline in research funding over the last 30 years, is because the US makes available so much God damn funding in comparison to any western world. The reason China is starting to outstrip the US? Because they are starting to surpass the US in funding. The only downside I have heard from Chinese scientists is that you tend to get pigeon holed for the rest of your career into things the state wants/needs

Herring• 16 days ago

America is like a trust fund baby given all the advantages and then the baby goes "fuck it, life is too hard, I am just going to do coke and die early”.

greenavocado2• 16 days ago

I think you meant to write "boomers."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1trcILsBHkE

greenavocado2• 16 days ago

The article has failed to prove that anybody has taken the bait and left.

For the researcher, the qualities must, from an international perspective, far exceed what is customary within the international peer group. The institution receives a maximum of €1 million per researcher for the next five years.

Let's be generous and assume you are one of the chosen ones. Your institution will take 20% off the top leaving with you 1million×.80/5 or 160k EUR per year.

After income taxes, your take home pay is €90,868.00 or $103k USD. Not bad for the average man, but not good for a top researcher like they want.

EUR 160k works out to about $182,640. For that level of income in a top tier institution in a state with an income tax like Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD you would take home $121,565, or 15% more.

https://thetax.nl/?income=160000&startFrom=Year&selectedYear...

283042834092342• 16 days ago

Assume you are correct, and the Dutch offer a terrible proposition. Yet still they come.

zipy1242• 16 days ago

Academic pay is standardised in many EU countries. For example in the UK you can look up union rates of pay. At UCL (I'm still currently affiliated as I finish my PhD) the pay for a professor starts at £82,157 and goes up to a minimum of £139,882 for the top band. There is an additional £4,678 on top as a London allowance. This roughly lines up with your figure per year, so seems reasonable as an allocation of cost.

Also there are usually very very generous pension schemes here, so total pay is actually quite a lot higher than stated. In addition there is very generous holiday allowance, 41 days at UCL for instance, since you get extra holidays when the university is closed over certain holiday days.

Cthulhu_8• 16 days ago

This assumes the 1 million is all they get or can use to pay them with. The 1 million is a subsidy, not their salary.

Besides, 90K after taxes is upper middle class. 160K / year is 13K / month which is nearly twice the average income of the richest country in Europe (Switzerland) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...), or top 0.1% according to https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i.

And that's just salary based on that number, it doesn't include other income sources.

MITSardine3• 16 days ago

From the article, it sounds more like these funds are the research budget (what you pay other people with). This is quite attractive, students are typically < 200k / PhD, so you can fund quite a few theses with this right off the bat. Basically max out the lab for the grant duration.

I don't know what their salaries would be exactly. This is probably most dependent on where they land, as salaries are very often standardized in Europe. There's usually salary grids per institution dependent on seniority with some milestones being merit-based. Quick google search indicates gross salaries for Professor level (mid/late career) researchers to be around 110-165k€ in NL.

That seems pretty sweet. It's comparable to what US professors make in the hard sciences, as far as I know, with lower CoL than most areas where professors make similar salaries.

And again, salary isn't everything to a researcher. If they can't hire, they're pretty strapped. At this career stage, they're managers, not so much individual contributors. I'd say a maxed out lab for 5 years off the bat is pretty enticing, which also gives time to get up to speed on European funding schemes like ERC grants.

I was a postdoc in the US during Trump's reelection and there were several months where my institution and others had completely cut off scientific staff (such as postdocs, research scientists and engineers) recruitment due to NSF defunding and other threats. Even now, they got taxed on endowment and lost basically 10% budget. This is considerable, and a source of stress for researchers and their current/prospective staff. You can't work properly if you're under the Damocles sword of being laid off / having to lay off your staff.

HelloUsername• 16 days ago

Another news article in English: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/07/top-us-scientists-come-to-n...

derbOac• 16 days ago

The last paragraph has some important context:

"De Jonge Akademie, an association of young scientists, warned last year that the fund could end up recruiting academic stars who are not under threat, at a time when Dutch universities were cutting jobs because of government cutbacks. The new cabinet reversed those cuts last month, pledging up to €428 million a year extra for research."

drstewart5• 16 days ago

Will they be exempt from providing ID to post on the internet or nah?

michalpleban• 16 days ago

I can post on the Internet whatever I want without providing any ID whatsover.

drstewart5• 16 days ago

*For now

blastonico• 16 days ago

Who are those "top" researchers? and how many?

lifestyleguru• 16 days ago

They are going to live in Netherlands where? In what housing?

Maybe Europe will engage the top American intellectual power into ejecting the real estate prices into orbit.

dwa3592• 16 days ago

Actually there are many such headlines, just replace the Netherlands with [China, Singapore, Australia, India].

andsoitis2• 16 days ago

That's not a truthful translation of the article's headline, BTW.

More correct would be "First international scientists to the Netherlands via the Tulip Fund", which is a far cry from the title as submitted.

eth0up• 15 days ago

Because I was flagged, with no reason or excuse, to those who actually manually viewed the now invisible comment and wonder the reference, please see:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Considering the grim reality of our fiscal derangement, and the context, I think the reaction here was a bit obtuse. Or maybe I'm beleaguered by Taylor Swift fans.... and economists, which I think have very similar discretion

neuronexmachina• 16 days ago

Official page for the Tulip Fund: https://www.nwo.nl/en/calls/tulip-fund

Z4cki• 16 days ago

How did you find this out? Not sure if its true!

mnky9800n• 16 days ago

I apologise if this is overly negative. It is based on my experience working as a soft money researcher (my own grants) at a Dutch university. My opinions may not be shared.

In my experience The Netherlands is a rather unsupportive place to do research. There is essentially no money from the government that will pay salaries in full, especially early career salaries (vini, vidi, vici). I have had friends win ERC grants (millions in euros) that were fired as a result because there was not a space in the department to hire them full time (Dutch work law requires contracts to become permanent after a certain number of years of working). Departments also seem to have glass ceilings for non Dutch. Researchers are often given large teaching commitments that cannot be bought out with grants. University incubators seem to be better suited to let professors pretend to be start up founders then actual innovation centers. I have tried on multiple occasions to engage the local incubator and have always been run around. Yet local Dutch have no issues. The rules seem to be different for Dutch than for foreigners. A foreign colleague was offered a lucrative consulting contract (a normal thing for successful professors at other universities). The Dutch university he was at refused to let him take it except under the understanding the money would be entirely consumed by the university and he would receive no compensation for bringing in private money even though he would be doing all of the work. Meanwhile the Dutch colleague in the next office was allowed to start a private consulting agency through the local incubator and spend as much time as he wanted working in the start up. The universities publish reports how progressive they are by evaluating professors on teaching and outreach meanwhile having internal department expectations of PhD students to publish at least four first author papers or are not allowed to graduate (on four year contracts with one year full time teaching commitment). In my experience it is rare that PhD students finish on time. As one adminstrator told me, “university promoters are more interested in promoting their careers then their PhD students” (promoter is the word used for the adviser). The universities also disallow working outside of typical hours and there is no ability to work in your own office on the weekends. Also, recently they defended against this, but it will come up again, the government has discussed changing the tax law such that startup shares will have real world value so new valuations become taxable events.

This all is not atypical to universities world wide. But in the Netherlands I have not found a place that made me feel like I could work to the best of my ability and at the cutting edge. This is unfortunate. It’s nice to live here but I’m leaving to go to greener pastures.

pavel_lishin• 16 days ago

It’s nice to live here but I’m leaving to go to greener pastures.

May I ask where you're looking? What countries have the best support for you to do your best work?

zyxzevn• 16 days ago

I see a lot of complaining from small companies and startups. The taxing system is slowly becoming communism (I have no better word). And they also are stopping farming, based on bad ideas.

I tried to get into fundamental research, but disliked the burocratic approach in Dutch universities.

bjelkeman-again• 16 days ago

The taxing system becoming communism? I think you may need to recalibrate that a bit. https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/democratic-sociali...

tokai• 16 days ago

You don't really pay tax in a communist system. No need if the state pays all salaries. China first got a tax law in 1980 as part of Xiaoping's modernization of the Chinese economy and the opening up for the private market.

daedrdev• 16 days ago

that were fired as a result because there was not a space in the department to hire them full time (Dutch work law requires contracts to become permanent after a certain number of years of working).

This is a very common law in european companies and is killing economic growth. Idk why they do this.

spockz• 16 days ago

The idea is to prevent employees from being used as full time employees but squeezed and then let go.

MITSardine3• 16 days ago

It's just labor law, these are countries where job security is considered very important. As a result, a lot hinges on having an indefinite duration contract.

The same rule exists in France and you'll have a hard time getting a loan or even a rental if you don't have the sacrosanct CDI (Indefinite Duration Contract), or legal guarantors with one.

It may seem absurd in these edge cases, but it's a way of putting pressure on employers to either hire people for the long term, or let them go.

In this case, it's not necessarily a bad thing in 90% of cases either (because those that don't get permanent employment despite scoring ERCs are certainly very rare), it prevents people from being stringed along in a lab where they're not really building up a career, but rather setting themselves up to be 40 and unemployable, when they're eventually not given the job security the lab would have given 5+ years earlier if they ever intended to/could do so.

amoshebb• 16 days ago

I could only find 4 names:

1 full prof at Vanderbilt with a real research program who has been listed as PI on a bunch of grants. "Top researcher" may be generous, but based on nothing I'd say reasonable description.

The other 3: 1 is a VU Amsterdam PhD who was on a Netherlands Government funded 24-month postdoc in Harvard who's been at VU Amsterdam since 2017. 1 is an adjunct (on leave) prof from Israel who has worked at a few german universities, most recently an Munster (doesn't qualify for the 30% rule). The last resigned over a year ago and has been contracting at a couple UK universities.

This seems less like "Top researchers leave USA" and more like "Typical Academic Bag Chasing"

searine• 16 days ago

Its not just what makes the news. There is a cooling effect happening in recruiting international talent.

Science is heavily international, and if people feel like they won't get funding/wont be safe here, they won't come.

Shocka1• 16 days ago

I know this is anecdotal, but my engineering graduate program at a well known private university in the NE had roughly 300 graduates, more than half of them on student visas. I feel it's more popular than ever to act as though one has ideals, but there is an endless supply of talent waiting for a spot at these prestigious American universities.

voxl• 16 days ago

Researchers _would_ leave in droves if they could. But it turns out the entire world doesn't actually care much for research. The US was actually unique in that regard.

hashstring• 16 days ago

That’s not true and uninformed. What even makes you believe this?

Europe has tons of top research universities. Both EU and China are competing with the US [0].

And this news is not an isolated event. The majority of Americans rank US higher education research and innovation as: poor [1]. US top universities are shrinking PhD programs [2.

The thing that makes the US unique is that they are really dropping the ball in a lot of areas, because of bad leadership of the financial and political “elite”.

[0] https://sciencebusiness.net/news/universities/how-eu-researc... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/15/growing-s... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/us/research-universities-...

Freak_NL• 16 days ago

I could only find 4 names:

They haven't published the full list of the 34 researchers accepted so far:

Namen van de 34 bursalen maakt NWO niet bekend, aldus een woordvoerder, omdat de aanstellingsprocedures nog lopen en sommige onderzoekers geen publiciteit willen.

(NRC July 7th, https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/07/07/tulp-fonds-voor-academi...)

So you'll only find the names of those who are now in a position to speak out about this issue.

larodi• 16 days ago

And then Dutch-Americans leave for Bulgaria and Romania .) occasionally Croatia

mbmbn• 16 days ago

This title is very misrepresentative of the actual article.

This is an article about initiatives to attract scientists to the Netherlands, not about some supposed ongoing brain drain.

duxup• 16 days ago

Is there money available to absorb more than a handful of these types of people and their research and related costs?

loorke• 16 days ago

Wishful thinking

Top researchers leave USA for the Netherlands (in Dutch)

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