HUN-REN Welcome Home Programme — Reversing Hungary's Scientific Brain Drain

Launched by HUN-REN (the Hungarian Research Network, formerly ELKH) in March 2023, the Welcome Home and Foreign Researcher Recruitment Programme funds Hungarian researchers working abroad (or foreign researchers) to relocate to a HUN-REN site in Hungary and lead an independent research group, with non-repayable grants of up to HUF 200 million (roughly €500,000) over a maximum of five years.

Eligibility requires current employment abroad (or departure from a foreign position within the previous six months) and demonstrated scientific excellence; research sites are capped at one or two applications each. Grantees must also secure matching external funding, such as an ERC grant, an EU Framework Programme award, or an equivalent industry partnership, during the project period.

The first funded cohort, announced in December 2023, recruited seven senior researchers — six Hungarian nationals returning from abroad and one foreign national — from institutions including Stanford University (two researchers), NYU School of Medicine/Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute, the University of Eastern Finland, Eindhoven University of Technology, and the Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerranée.

This is a small, elite programme by design rather than a mass-scale one; public sources document only the first-round total of seven researchers, with no running multi-year count or post-grant retention data yet available.