At the “Choose Europe for Science” conference at Paris’ Sorbonne University on 5 May, French President Emmanuel Macrohon announced incentives for science researchers willing to work in Europe.
At the same conference, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EC will invest $566 million over the next two years aimed at making Europe attractive for researchers.
These announcements come at a time billions of dollars are being cut off from science institutes and universities in the US.
For decades, America has been a magnet for the world’s most talented researchers, scientists, and academics attracted by grants and emoluments offered by US universities and other entities with large budgets, modern labs, and other incentives.
Last year, the US spent some $1 trillion on R&D, with government spending constituting 40 percent of total spending. This explains the brain drain from other countries.
But recent developments in the US have given global leaders a chance to reverse the flow.
A particular case in point involves Kseniia Petrova, the hapless brilliant Russian supernerd biomedical scientist conducting anti-cancer and age-reversal studies in a Harvard University lab who was detained by Customs officials at Boston’s Logan International Airport for failing to declare frog embryo samples she had brought in from France at her lab supervisor’s request.
A 2021 graduate of the Russian Physics and Technology Institute, Petrova was recruited for a genome-sequencing project by Rutgers University molecular biologist Dr. Konstantin Severinov.
Like many young Russians, she protested Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, causing her arrest once, in March 2022. She was charged and fined US$200 for an administrative violation and was released.
She fled to Georgia where, in May 2023, she received a communication to conduct cancer and anti-aging genetic studies at Harvard Medical School.
Petrova was the only scientist at Harvard’s Biology Department’s Kirschner Lab with the technical skills to analyze data from a special microscope used to study cell divisions in xenopus frogs’ eggs, investigating how these renew themselves with the goal of reversing aging.
Her supervisor, Dr. Leon Peshkin, described Petrova as “spectacular, the best I’ve seen in 20 years at Harvard.”
In February, Petrova vacationed in Paris where, at Peshkin’s request, she picked up frog embryo samples from the Institut Curie.
Back in Boston on 15 February, she told Customs agents at Logan International Airport she had frog embryos in her suitcase. They queried her on those and her work history and all was fine, except for one thing: the frog embryos were undeclared in her Customs declaration form.
Typically, the penalty for this oversight would be a fine up to $500, which is usually reduced to $50 for a first-time violation. Instead, Logan airport Customs officers said they would cancel her visa, making Petrova an undocumented foreigner subject to deportation to Russia.
They did ask if she feared deportation. She said yes, because she had fled Russia for political reasons and faced arrest, or worse, if she returned.
She was brought to a processing center in Vermont, then to the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, where she was detained with no civil or criminal charges, for nearly three months.
On 14 May, after asking government lawyers if Customs had the authority to cancel Petrova’s visa, Vermont Federal Judge Christina Reiss set a bail hearing for later in May, an indication that she was moving towards Petrova’s release.
Suddenly, government lawyers unsealed felony smuggling charges against Petrova. Legal experts wondered why it took all of three months before it was determined that Petrova had committed a crime worth charging.
What Petrova was charged with typically applies to cases such as for-profit operations like importing a tiger, or a man caught with boots made of endangered sea turtles, and another apprehended for bringing in live exotic birds.
“I have never seen charges brought in for a case involving academic research material,” said immigration and criminal law specialist, UC Davis law professor Eric Fish.
Petrova’s lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, lamented the government’s “attempt to justify its legally indefensible position that this scientist working for the US on cures for cancer and aging research has, somehow, become a danger to the community.”
For her part, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, in an affidavit of support for the Russian supernerd Harvard biomedical researcher, said, “The high profile detention of international students threaten the country’s global leadership in scientific innovation.”
She continued, “Actions targeting international students and academics sends a chilling message to talented students and academics around the world that they risk detention, deportation, and an end to their academic (or work) career working in the US.”