Although many of the researchers are refugees, their status varies. Some have formally sought asylum in the countries where they are now working or studying, while others hope their academic placements abroad will be a temporary respite. Countless more scholars remain in their own countries, their work — and lives — severely restricted by security threats, failing infrastructure, persecution, loss of income, international isolation and collapsing governments.
“These researchers are important as critical voices in their home countries and for contributing to development and social well-being, to scientific and economic progress,” says Georg Scholl of Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, a foundation that is funding dozens of displaced researchers on two-year fellowships at German universities and research institutions through its Philipp Schwartz Initiative. “They are not just refugees in need, but researchers who are good at what they do,” Scholl says. “If we lose them, we lose their impact, too, what they could do for economies and for societies.”
“I Feel Like a Real Scientist Again”
Nedal Said was one such researcher working to make a positive impact in his home country of Syria. At a microbiology lab in Aleppo that monitored water pollution, he was researching new methods of drinking water disinfection. Then, in 2012, a friend in the police force tipped him off that he had been labeled an opponent of the Syrian regime and was in serious danger. “My friend said, ‘I won’t tell anyone, but you have to leave the country within two days,’ ” Said says. “So I got passports issued for me and my family, and we fled to Turkey.”
More than 20 million people have had to flee their home countries; about 40 million more are displaced within their borders
There, Said, his wife and their three young children bounced around cities, moving from a rented home into a refugee camp as their financial resources dwindled. Said worked a year as a cashier in a produce market, but it provided hardly enough money to live on, much less any professional satisfaction. “I studied for 15 years to do science, to help people, not to live in a camp with the government giving me food,” he says. Seeing no future in Turkey, Said left his family in the camp and made the perilous sea crossing to Europe, ending up in Germany, where he didn’t know a single person and couldn’t speak the language. His luck changed when he met a couple he could talk to in Russian, which he knew from his student days abroad.
“Finally I could explain myself, how I was a microbiologist, how I had worked at a university in Aleppo,” Said says. A chain of personal connections led him to a professor at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig who was looking for a microbiologist for his department. The researcher sponsored Said’s successful application to become one of the Philipp Schwartz Initiative’s first fellows.
“The people at the Helmholtz Centre are from Canada, Italy, Japan, Russia, but we all work as one family,” Said says. He has been preparing bacteria samples and learning how to use a cryo-scanning electron microscope to analyze the role microorganisms play in transforming carbon, nitrogen and other elements in both natural and polluted ecosystems. “I feel like a real scientist again.”
Said’s family has joined him in Germany, where they are all learning the language. “The children learn very quickly, not like us,” he laughs. He is volunteering with another organization, Chance for Science, which connects displaced researchers with academic resources and European peers. “I talk to the scientists who only speak Arabic, to tell them about ways they can continue in their field in Germany,” Said says. “I know how they feel because I lived through the same difficult situation. I want to help them, because they are like I was.”
Many uprooted scientists feel a similar commitment to help their colleagues — those trying to integrate in a new country and those struggling to continue their work back home. Dauqan, the Yemeni biochemist in Malaysia, recently organized an academic workshop for Yemeni students at her current university. She also tries to help them find postgraduate job opportunities abroad until it is safe to return home. And she continues to act as a supervisor for a biochemistry Ph.D. candidate who is still in Yemen. “We communicate by WhatsApp and email,” Dauqan says of the candidate, who is analyzing the chemical composition of thyme. “The university in Sana’a is still open, but her situation is so difficult. She is trying to do her best, but she can’t do any laboratory work when they have no electricity.”