Research funding row: Nobel winners Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo will leave US
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New York: US-based Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will leave the US to join the University of Zurich in Switzerland as experts warn President Trump of brain drain after his cuts to research funding, news agency AFP reported.
Currently working at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the married couple, who won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize alongside Michael Kremer, would join the university’s economics department from July next year, the University of Zurich announced.
However, the University did not expand on why the couple were leaving the American university.
Meanwhile, experts have warned Trump that his drastic cuts to research funding and indifference to academic freedom could make other countries to attract scientists triggering brain drain.
In March, Duflo in an editorial published in French newspaper Le Monde criticized what she said ‘unprecedented attacks’ on US science.
The university said that the couple will get endowed professorship at UZH funded by the Lemann Foundation, adding that they would ‘establish and co-lead the new Lemann Center for Development, Education and Public Policy’.
‘We are delighted that two of the world's most influential economists are joining UZH,’ university president Michael Schaepman reportedly said.
Duflo reportedly said that the new Lemann Center would help them ‘build on and expand’ their work thus bridging ‘academic research, student mentorship and real-world policy impact’.