Nobel laureates Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee to leave MIT for University of Zurich amid US funding cuts

Amid turbulent times between US universities and the Donald Trump-led government over federal funding and research restrictions, Nobel Prize–winning economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee are set to leave the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to join the University of Zurich (UZH) in July 2026.

Both Nobel laureates, known globally for their award-winning experiment-based approach to tackling poverty, will establish a new centre for development economics at the Swiss university. The move comes at a time when US universities are clashing with the White House over restrictions linked to federal research funding .

Trump government vs US universities

As part of a broader crackdown on student migration, the Trump government recently proposed a 15% cap on international students’ enrollment in undergraduate programmes, along with a 5% limit on admission from a single country.

MIT was the first university to refuse to support the White House memo. In an open letter to US education secretary Linda McMahon, MIT president Sally Kornbluth said some of the policies would restrict the institute’s independence and freedom of expression, as reported by Reuters.

Duflo and Banerjee to lead new Lemann Center

According to the official statement by the Swiss university: Duflo and Banerjee will establish and co-lead the new Lemann Center for Development, Education and Public Policy at UZH’s Department of Economics. The Centre is funded through a CHF 26 million (USD 32 million) endowment from the Lemann Foundation.

The goal of the center will be to foster policy-relevant research, create new higher education pathways in the field of policy evaluation and development, and connect researchers and education policymakers worldwide. It will have a specific focus on fostering the relationship between UZH and researchers and policymakers in Brazil.

'UZH will be an excellent environment for us'

Duflo said: “The new Lemann Center will enable us to build on and expand our work, which bridges academic research, student mentorship, and real-world policy impact.”

"The goal is to establish a center of excellence for research and teaching in development economics, in close collaboration with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the worldwide network of over 1,000 researchers that Duflo and Banerjee co-founded, and which has hubs in all continents, including in Sao Paulo, Brazil," he said as quoted by the university.

"I am especially enthusiastic about contributing to making the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics at UZH an even more attractive place," Abhijit Banerjee said.

"We have no doubt that the University of Zurich will be an excellent environment for us to pursue our research and policy work in the years to come," he added.

'Quantum leap' for UZH

Florian Scheuer, who heads the Department of Economics, called their decision "a true quantum leap for the economics department of the university and beyond!"

“We will continue to work hard on attracting outstanding economists from around the world to Zurich, including from the US, and on raising the resources needed to support them—especially during the current, special times in the international higher education landscape,” he said.