Clockwise from left: Alessandra Biffi, Vito Cacucciolo, Woojin Kwon, Luisa De Vivo.
Researchers and PhD students from Italy move between countries significantly more than the EU average, second only to their Spanish counterparts, according to data from MORE4 (Mobility Patterns and Career Paths of EU Researchers), a 2021 survey funded by the European Commission.
Lack of opportunities and unsatisfactory working conditions often drive scientists to seek better opportunities abroad. ‘Italy is still one of the countries with a higher level of forced mobility linked to the absence of other options to develop a career in academia,’ the survey explains. In 2019, almost 20% of Italian researchers going abroad reported doing so due to a lack of funding and positions.
However, a 2018 survey by ISTAT shows that just under 2% of Italian PhD candidates say they want to leave the country ‘permanently’. And several initiatives, such as dedicated public and private grants and tax breaks, have been launched over the years to lure academics to return to Italy from abroad. Nature Italy spoke to four scientists who, after spending periods abroad, returned to Italy.
ALESSANDRA BIFFI: going abroad should be a strategic choice
Director of the Pediatric Oncoematology Clinic at the University of Padua and coordinator of research in stem cell transplants and gene therapy at the Institute for Pediatric Research of Padua
I don’t think going abroad is essential. Everyone who works in science aims at a goal, in my case it was helping patients with rare and incurable diseases. You should go to the right place to achieve your goal —be it the United States or Africa. The place should be a means to an end.I don’t fit into the classic case of the researcher who goes abroad at a young age, because I went to the US for a significant period of research when I was 42. Until then, I had been working for more than 15 years in a world-class environment, the Telethon San Raffaele Institute for Gene Therapy. I never had the feeling that I needed to go abroad to do better what I was already doing.
But then I was called to the United States to take up an associate professor position at Harvard Medical School and to head the gene therapy programme at Boston Children’s Hospital. It was an opportunity for professional growth within my field.
A few years later, I was considering returning to Italy for family reasons. A very elderly parent needed help: I’m an only child, so I didn't have much choice. Coincidentally, the University of Padova contacted me asking if I would ever consider taking over a department. It was a real career opportunity, and I’m still happy with my choice.
Funds may be easier to access in the US than in Italy, but I have always felt that the quality of science and of researchers is not different. On the contrary, perhaps those who have fewer resources and still manage to be competitive are even better. But the lack of resources, and a less efficient system puts us at a disadvantage.
VITO CACUCCIOLO: being abroad has made me appreciate Italy more
Associate Professor at Bari Polytechnic, Research Affiliate at MIT Media Lab and CEO of Omnigrasp, working on soft robotics and artificial muscles.
The great thing about going abroad is that you start to see yourself and your world more clearly. Doing research in other countries has made me appreciate Italy more. I understood that many of the issues I saw in Italy—such as drowning in paperwork—were also present elsewhere. They are systemic problems in the research environment.
I did my Master’s degree at the Bari Polytechnic in Puglia, southern Italy. My university offered a joint degree with New York University, where I had my first experience abroad. That made me realise that I wanted to be a researcher in life. Getting students into laboratories, showing them how research is done, is still not done often enough in Italy. Training and research should be more permeable to each other.
After my experience in the US, I returned to Italy for a PhD in biorobotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa. I was stationed in a detached lab in Livorno, on the Tuscan coast, and I found a truly international environment.
Then I landed at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland. It’s a place where the work dynamic is very healthy. As a rule, you stay there just for a fixed number of years: the result is that researchers collaborate, because they are not competing for a career there. Unfortunately, this is not common in Italy: there is little mobility and people tend to stay at the same university. This creates internal competition because everyone is trying to scramble for a chair.
My wife and I had planned the experience in Switzerland as a temporary one. We wanted to return to Puglia, where we were both born and raised, to bring back the things we had learned, and to raise children with our families close by. My wife is a teacher and has followed me for a long time, always managing to work without giving up her career. Then she was offered a stable teaching job in Puglia, and that was a key factor in our decision to return.
At the Bari Polytechnic I contacted professors I’d known in the past. I told them my story and the results I had achieved so far, and they were really welcoming. Being in an environment that welcomes you is crucial when you come back.
WOOJIN KWON: Italy has the power of its people
Principal Investigator of QUAVADIS, an ERC-funded project on quantum vortex simulation at the Department of Physics at the University of Milan
My case— a South Korean physicist working in Italy—is very peculiar. After working as a postdoc for one year in Germany, I first came to Italy with an assegno di ricerca (postdoctoral fellowship) and stayed for four and a half years at the LENS lab in Sesto Fiorentino, near Florence, also thanks to a Marie Curie fellowship. I left in summer 2022 for my home country, South Korea, and have just started my new position as PI of the ERC project QUAVADIS, at the University of Milan.
I have been told by Italians that I am very brave. I think that means that in general, it’s quite difficult for foreigners to adapt easily to the Italian system — not just to research and academic life.
Italian bureaucracy is very slow and complicated: as a foreigner, I had many nightmares. I had to get a visa and then apply for a residence permit, but it wasn’t easy to find even English-speaking officials in the questura – the office in charge of issuing documents to foreigners. So, I always brought my boss or my friends from the lab with me, and they were incredibly helpful.
With regards to academic life, the Korean system is much simpler. As a researcher, I have more freedom, even for small things like buying equipment for the lab. If I have a research fund, then I can get a research credit card in my name and directly buy what I need, if it’s under a set amount. During my time in Sesto Fiorentino, I learned that the process is much more difficult in Italy.
I’m working on ultra-cold atoms and ultra-cold quantum gases. It’s advanced research, but what gives me headaches are mostly trivial problems – such as overcoming language barriers.
The reason I decided to come back to Italy again is quite personal. I like Italian people very much: I think our cultures overlap, in a way, and it’s easy to become good friends. In Sesto Fiorentino I met many wonderful people who have made a difference to me: my colleagues in the lab, but also my neighbours. My landlords became like a second family to me.
It was not an easy decision for me. Salaries in Italy are tough, and I have four children: I was only able to come back because I won a grant from the European Research Council. And it is still a big adventure for my whole family.
I have many criticisms of the Italian research system and the social system for foreigners. But I believe that Italy has the power of its people, to change things for the better.
LUISA DE VIVO: sometimes I feel like an alien
Principal Investigator at the Brain and Sleep Research Laboratory at the University of Camerino, where she studies the link between sleep loss and mental health
The first time I went abroad was to work in a lab that studies sleep and consciousness in Madison, Wisconsin, in the United States, one of the most important labs in the world on this topic. Then I moved to the United Kingdom, to Bristol. In the UK, I appreciated being in an international environment with a lot of turnover, which I don’t notice here in Italy. Everything is a bit more static, so there are people who have been in the same department all their lives and can’t really imagine moving. Abroad, whole research groups can change. It is more destabilizing, but perhaps more stimulating.
I was finally able to come back to Italy thanks to a grant from the Giovanni Armenise Harvard Foundation. This meant that I had the funds to start a lab from scratch, in an environment that allowed me scientific independence. These are the two rare, perhaps exceptional, conditions that convinced me to return to Italy.
I'm glad I came back. I went abroad to increase my knowledge, but I always wanted to feel part of my Italian community. I’ve seen that I’m better off with the European working culture: in the States, for better or worse, you work a lot, even to unhealthy levels. In Europe there is a better work-life balance.
But you have to make compromises. Doing research in Italy is very difficult because everything moves very slowly. Coming from abroad, you must accept that there are technical times that you cannot get around. It’s very frustrating: while the rest of the world is running, you wait.
However, I notice the biggest difference between Italy and abroad is outside the lab. Abroad, when I said that I was a scientist, people understood. Being a researcher is recognised as a profession. Whereas here in Italy, when I say ‘I’m a researcher,’ I get blank stares. There’s a lack of awareness of what we do, in people of all ages. Often, I have to say I’m a university lecturer, and so people become convinced that my main role is just teaching, which is only a minor part of what I do. And it’s a bit discouraging, sometimes, because I feel a bit like an alien, like I’m doing a job that is not recognised in society.
Being in Italy is an advantage for now, and I like it. But if my situation changes, I’m ready to call that into question again.
