Growing up in Brazil, neuroscientist Danielle Beckman always dreamed of moving to the US for work. So, in 2017, when Beckman got the opportunity to work at the California National Primate Research Center at UC Davis, she jumped on it. “I was so excited,” she recalled. “Coming to the US was always the dream. It was always the place to be, where there’s the biggest investment in science.” But months into President Donald Trump’s second term, as his administration wages an unprecedented war on the country’s top universities and research institutions, Beckman no longer sees the US as a welcome home for her or her research, which focuses on how viral infections like Covid-19 affect the brain. Beckman is part of a growing wave of academics, scientists and researchers leaving the US in what many are warning could be the biggest brain drain the country has seen in decades. But…
