To the scores of scientific luminaries who support them, the Terrones brothers are two of the brightest stars of Mexican science and have raised the nation's profile in nanotechnology. Yet the federal Institute for Scientific and Technological Research of San Luis Potosí (IPICYT) fired Humberto and Mauricio Terrones Maldonado in December, and their future in their home country is now looking dim.

Mauricio Terrones is an established nanotech researcher. Credit: R. ROMERO/NEWSCOM

International science leaders say that the case serves as an example of how entrenched scientific bureaucracies in developing nations can drive away promising researchers, especially those who have been trained abroad.

"This is a major loss for Mexican science," says Mildred Dresselhaus, a nanotechnology researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who has advocated on behalf of the Terrones.

David Ríos Jara, IPICYT's director, rejects these arguments. "The foreign scientists' perception that Mexican science is in imminent peril is a flat misconception," he says, adding that "there are about 20,000 researchers in the country carrying out high-quality research in many areas".

Ríos says that he was forced to terminate the employment of the brothers because they had violated institute rules and Mexican laws. Scientists outside Mexico have heard only one side of the story, he says.

After receiving their doctorates in the United Kingdom and doing postdoctoral work abroad, the Terrones returned to Mexico and established the country's first nanotech lab, located at IPICYT, about a decade ago. They secured several large grants, collaborated with top researchers abroad and published well-cited papers on carbon nanotubes and buckyballs in high-impact journals.

But several years ago, disagreements arose between the Terrones and the administration at IPICYT over the operation of their lab (see Nature 454, 143; 2008). Tensions between the two sides came to a head late last year, and the brothers were expelled from their lab in December.

"I won't work in a developing nation again," says Mauricio. "Other Mexican universities are afraid to hire us," adds Humberto.

Centre of attention

In an e-mail to Nature on 25 February, Ríos accuses the brothers of several "irregularities": failing to include IPICYT in four technology patent applications, not securing proper authority to travel extensively last year and improperly working for a private university. The Terrones deny any impropriety and blame professional jealousy for their firing, a charge that Ríos rejects.

In 2008, the Terrones brothers' situation attracted the attention of prominent scientists, including British researcher Harold Kroto and Mexico's Mario Molina, both winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They unsuccessfully lobbied for a compromise with Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and other top officials. Kroto and some 70 other scientists are again petitioning in support of the brothers (see Correspondence from H. W. Kroto et al., page 160).

The appeals by researchers outside Mexico have not calmed the situation. In a written response to enquiries from Nature, Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez, president of the Mexican National Academy of Science, said that the letter sent to President Calderón in 2008 "created a great deal of unease in the Mexican scientific community, since its arguments lack sufficient knowledge of the regulations in Mexican institutions". Ruiz said the case has divided the Mexican scientific community and that "proper channels exist for resolving this disagreement".

Some are pessimistic about the chances for resolving the dispute. Ljubisa Radovic is a Spanish-speaking materials scientist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park who visited San Luis Potosí in an unsuccessful attempt to broker a compromise. He blames the impasse on the IPICYT administration. "If you have stars like the Terrones," he says, "you take care of them."

Dresselhaus got a personal view of the escalating conflict in mid-December, when she visited IPICYT to participate in the doctoral defence of Jessica Campos-Delgado, one of the Terrones' students. An unusual number of uniformed guards were present, apparently to head off a disturbance by students supporting the Terrones, according to the brothers and Campos. The Terrones were intermittently called away for discussions with their lawyers and administrators. Around that time, their e-mail accounts were shut down, and by the end of December, their pay cheques stopped coming. "The whole event was bizarre," says Dresselhaus.

Kroto, who oversaw Mauricio's doctorate at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, says that he worries about the Terrones' remaining students. In an e-mail addressed to the "International Community" in late January, several students and staff in the Terrones' nanotech group said "we remain extremely worried that we might be fired on a whim" and that they had been pressured to retract their criticisms of the administration.

Ríos says that the IPICYT administration has offered its full support to the remaining students. The current students declined interview requests from Nature.

Campos, who received her degree, says that she remains shaken by the Terrones' firing. She will soon leave Mexico and head for a postdoctoral fellowship in Brazil. "I don't know if I can or will return, if I have to deal with the people who did this," she says.

That will be a loss for Mexico. During her doctoral training, Campos spent six months in Dresselhaus's lab at MIT, providing a key contribution to a method to enhance graphene nanoribbons for mass production as semiconductors (X. Jia et al. Science 323, 1701–1705; 2009). MIT, in conjunction with IPICYT, applied for a US patent application on the technology, and MIT now is seeking licensing agreements.

Helpful discussions

Two of the patents that Ríos says the Terrones failed to disclose involve Mexico's largest juice producer, Grupo Jumex in Tulpetlac. The other two are owned by institutions in Japan: the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba and Shinshu University in Wakasato.

The science for the patents was "partly or fully developed" at IPICYT, Ríos wrote, and "it goes without saying how serious stealing intellectual property is".

Gerd Reiband, a head engineer at Jumex, says that the company filed the two patent applications on its own because the work was conducted there, not at IPICYT. There was no agreement to financially reward the Terrones and their names were included as a courtesy for their helpful discussions. Scientists at the two Japanese institutions say similar conditions applied to their patents.

Ajayan Vinu, a materials scientist at NIMS, worked with Mauricio when the Mexican scientist was on a fellowship in Japan. Vinu says that he was astounded to hear that advice that Mauricio had offered had played a part in his dismissal.

"Tell them they are crazy," says Vinu, who was not contacted for details by IPICYT officials. "This is dangerous for science."

The brothers remain in San Luis Potosí and are considering legal action to fight the termination of their employment.

figure b