Toronto rising.

managed to lure chemical geneticist Guri Giaever away from Stanford University two years ago, part of the inducement was a new, bigger lab, and part was a prestigious government-funded research chair. But the biggest factor in the move, Giaever says, was the colleagues with whom she would be working. “In terms of what I’m doing, I would pretty much say hands down that Toronto is the best place in the world,” she says. Canadian scientists and administrators welcome such adulation. With the much bigger and richer United States to the south, Canada has often been preoccupied with a brain drain, as the brightest minds sought greater rewards at one of its neighbour’s institutions. Increasingly, though, the country’s biggest city, Toronto, is celebrating a ‘brain gain’ as it succeeds in attracting top researchers, often to work at brand new research centres. Federal and provincial efforts that began a decade ago are helping to attract highcalibre researchers and putting them in charge of longterm, ‘big science’ projects, according to researchers and business development officials. The new policies are an attempt to build on Toronto’s impressive existing research infrastructure.