A week after launching its Safe Place for Science call for applications, Aix-Marseille University (AMU) has already received a large number of them. "About 50 have come in through all kinds of channels: emails, social media, but also via our laboratory directors who are in contact with researchers in the United States," said Eric Berton, president of AMU, proud of the initiative’s success.

The program at the Provence university, conceived in the wake of the Stand Up for Science movement, is designed to welcome scientists prevented from continuing their research in the US by measures taken by Donald Trump. "It is a question of giving scientific asylum to all those colleagues who are being held back, dismissed or whose funding has been cut. Out of solidarity, but also because what is happening over there is impacting our research," said Berton.

On Tuesday, March 11, AMU, which has 120 research units and 80,000 students, welcomed the first of these potential recruits. Andrea, a 39-year-old doctor of epidemiology and assistant professor at a large state university in the American Northeast, does not wish to be identified. "Because I have not yet had an official offer here, but also because I would like to personally announce my departure to the students and the postdoctoral fellow for whom I am responsible," she explained.

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