American universities are snapping up Europe's best and brightest by offering higher salaries and better career prospects. Two Italian physicists working at CERN tell us their tales.

Reporter: Brain drain

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Brain drain. Europe is losing its most  qualified workers due to a lack of funds.

According to MEPs,  research should emphasised

We went to Geneva to visit the European  Organization for Nuclear Research,

a centre that attracts the best physicists  from Europe and around the world.

at CERN, the European Organization  for Nuclear Research,

an international lab situated at  the border of Switzerland and France.

Italian researcher Alessio Bonato  came here two years ago.

The 29-year-old has a PhD from  the University of Hamburg in Germany.

His research at CERN is financed  by the Hopkins University in the US.

I didn’t specifically look  for an American university.

the offer was very competitive,  and the university is prestigious.

She too used to collaborate with  the Americans, with MIT in Boston.

But she decided to revert to a contract  with the Italian University of Turin.

Both researchers work  with the world's biggest accelerator.

The interactions of particles accelerated  to increasing velocities are analysed here.

The objective is to recreate the Big Bang  and to discover the origin of matter.

Alessio's study will bring prestige  to American research,

She's one of the few Italians  who've obtained a research grant

thanks to the government's initiative  for reversing the brain drain.

It finances the research projects of young  people with 3 years' experience abroad.

The contract can be renewed  up to a maximum of six years.

I was teaching  a certain number of hours

and, at the same time,  carrying out my research at CERN.

Roberta and Alessio  have a similar background.

What do they think of the Italian system,  after working for US universities?

In Italy, in certain cases,  the system doesn't work properly

because often somebody's son  or grandson is chosen to a group

just to please someone.  This wouldn't happen in the US

because there the funding  depends on the results of the group.

In Italy things are different. You need  to pass a competition to be employed.

The US universities  certainly have a freer hand

essentially because they have more funds  and more liberty in using them.

Funding makes the difference,  not the quality of teaching,

on a visit to CERN  with a group of university students.

They form about 10% of the staff  of this international centre.

At the moment three of the four  experiments at CERN are led by Italians.

The expertise is Italian but  often the funding comes from abroad.

Today we have difficulties  in offering research grants,

two year contracts for young people  after their PhD.

Italy spends a little more than 1,10%  of its GDP on financing research.

It’s far from reaching the 3% goal  set by the European Commission

to make the EU more competitive  internationally.

According to some researchers, Italian  salaries are low on European standards

and less than half of the American ones.

Italy is losing its brains  and doesn’t attract any from abroad.

Very few foreign researchers  or scientists come to work in Italy

I think that's mainly because our offers  are not very competitive financially,

Alessio has decided not to come back  to Italy, preferring instead to work abroad

in the hope of higher salaries  and better career opportunities.

I like working, travelling, living in  different places, having new experiences.

I don’t miss my country and this  allows me to have more opportunities.