Brain drain by Giorgia Lupi, Simone Quadri, Gabriele Rossi, Davide Ciuffi, Federica Fragapane, Francesco Majno

This visualisation explores the phenomenon of global “brain drain” in science, with an eye towards understanding the reasons why researchers might choose to leave their countries of origin and pursue careers elsewhere. Combining three sets of data — a World Bank survey, results from a research paper titled Foreign Born Scientists: Mobility Patterns for Sixteen Countries, and The Times' ranking of the world's best universities — we contrasted the number of researchers per million people (y-axis) with the percentage of the country's GDP devoted to scientific R&D (x-axis).