How the Transfer Board works

We count a transfer when a senior scientist actually moves: their lab, their appointment, or their main employment shifts from one institution to another. Visiting positions, honorary titles, and secondary appointments show up on the board when they are newsworthy, but we label them clearly and they are never counted in any of the totals.

Some scientists keep a formal tie to the place they left, like a partial appointment or unpaid leave. We mark those records “retains origin tie” so the connection stays visible.

We publish a move only when we can point to sources for where the scientist landed, and in almost every case where they came from and when. Not all sources carry the same weight:

• Tier A comes straight from the people involved: the scientist’s own statement, or an announcement from either institution.
• Tier B is reporting from established outlets with named sources.
• Tier C is databases like OpenAlex and ORCID. They help confirm a move, but we never publish one on database evidence alone.

Every published record lists the sources behind it, so you can check our work.

We never guess why someone moved. A record gets a reason tag only when the scientist gave one publicly, and the tag quotes or links what they said: stated policy reasons, stated mixed reasons, or stated non-policy reasons. Most records carry no reason tag at all, because most scientists never say.

The board follows senior scientific talent, so every scientist on it gets a distinction tier:

• Tier 1, Global Laureate. Winners of the Nobel Prize, Fields Medal, Abel Prize, Breakthrough Prize, Turing Award, and awards of comparable standing.
• Tier 2, Internationally Decorated. Winners of major international prizes and national-academy-level honors a step below Tier 1.
• Tier 3, Research Leader. Institute directors, endowed chairs, and scientists whose move matters for their field.

Records are grouped into transfer windows, most of them aligned to academic years. When we have researched a window in both directions, scientists joining the US and scientists leaving it, we call it comprehensive and show summary numbers like net flow. A selected window collects notable moves only, so we show the records without totals that would understate the real picture.

The US inbound and outbound counts include only real changes of primary affiliation that cross the US border. Net flow is simply inbound minus outbound.

Scientist profiles include a career timeline drawn from public records, largely via OpenAlex. That timeline is there for context. It is not a list of transfers, and it never feeds the board’s numbers. Only records verified through the process above do.

Spotted an error? Email contact@ffppod.com with a source and we will review it. Every record shows when it was last verified, so corrections are visible, never silent.