Lund University pilots international talent drive with a disciplinary twist

01 Jul 2025 | News

Swedish university will seed foreign talent across departments to stimulate interdisciplinarity, especially with AI


With Donald Trump’s research policy wreaking havoc on international talent flows, Sweden’s Lund University is planning to recruit 25 international researchers for its novel interdisciplinary science teams.

“There are lots of junior scientists who had planned to go to the US, and now the whole academic market is, to some extent, in chaos. So, we thought it was a good time to put something on offer,” vice-chancellor Erik Renström told Science|Business.

The offer is the university’s largest-ever recruitment drive, with €7.6 million to spend on 15 assistant professors, with eight specialising in AI, and 10 visiting professors.

The idea is to recruit groups of interdisciplinary scientists centrally, but have them work in different teams across the university. “They will all end up in different departments, but we still can maintain them as a group that works in novel ways,”…