Interstate Migration of Foreign Scientists and Engineers

Martin Sorin, Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health
Randall Hannum, City University of New York

Funded Principal Investigators (PIs) in science are a valuable commodity. Upon them depends some of the success of states’ and institutions’ research. However, as ‘free agents’ they can move to new jobs to improve their status, salaries, ranks, collaborations, working environments, and personal situations. When they move, they often take their funded grants with them. Our study funded by the Alfred Sloan Foundation, compares groups of PIs working in the US funded by NIH (~1,500) and NSF (~800) who made at least one interstate move in the period 1994-2007. Our indicator of origin outside the US is receipt of a terminal degree abroad. We compare three subgroups of interstate movers: US Trained, Foreign Trained (NIH, 14%, NSF, 9%), and Foreign Origin – Bachelors/Masters degree abroad - (NIH, 6%, NSF, 21%) on number of interstate moves, gateway states, state origins, destinations, types and amounts of funding and fields of science.