Canada's Star Chemist Moves to China: Knowledge Transfer or Brain Drain?
Vienna, April 19, 2026 — Janusz Pawliszyn, 71, recipient of the Chemical Institute of Canada's highest honor and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, has joined Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. The Chinese university announced the acquisition on April 9. What may initially seem like a late career move for an emeritus professor reveals a pattern upon closer inspection that increasingly worries Western governments.
A network with Chinese roots
Pawliszyn is no stranger to the Chinese scientific community. During his career at the University of Waterloo, the Polish native supervised more than 110 Master's and doctoral students, as well as nearly 200 postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars. A significant portion of these came from China. One of his former mentees is Ouyang Gangfeng, who worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Pawliszyn's lab from 2004 to 2005. Today, Ouyang is a professor himself – at the same Sun Yat-sen University where his former mentor is now joining. The connections therefore date back decades.
Canada's Talent Program Under Pressure
Pawliszyn held a Canada Research Chair, one of those prestigious research professorships with which Ottawa has aimed to retain top scientists in the country since 2000. The program invests over 300 million Canadian dollars annually in retaining excellence. That a researcher thus funded is now switching to China raises questions. While Pawliszyn is of retirement age and formally no longer tied to public funding, he is taking with him decades of accumulated knowledge, networks, and methods.
Canada and its Five Eyes partners have been eyeing Chinese recruitment programs with suspicion for years. Beijing's notorious „Thousand Talents“ program has been repeatedly criticized for systematically poaching Western scientists, often by obscuring ties to Chinese institutions. Whether Pawliszyn was recruited through such a program is unknown. Sun Yat-sen University did not comment.
What does this mean for Europe?
For Austria and the EU, the case is a warning signal. European universities also maintain intensive cooperation with Chinese partners. The exchange of students and researchers is part of everyday academic life. However, the line between legitimate cooperation and strategic knowledge drain is increasingly blurring. Brussels has responded with the Foreign Subsidies Regulation and stricter security checks on research projects. It is questionable whether this is enough.
Especially in sensitive fields such as chemistry, biotechnology, and material sciences – Pawliszyn's specialty is analytical chemistry with applications in medicine and environmental research – know-how can be utilized in dual ways. Civil research today, military application tomorrow. This concern troubles Western security agencies.
The Two Sides of Power
Science thrives on exchange, on open borders of thought. But when Beijing systematically recruits the West's best while restricting access to Chinese research itself, an asymmetry arises. Janusz Pawliszyn may view his move as a personal decision. For the West, he is part of a larger picture: The battle for technological supremacy has long been fought in laboratories. YANUS continues to pursue this topic.
