New York City is a diverse center of internationalism, and its scientific resources mirror that diversity, say researchers. The city's teaching institutions draw a high percentage of top-notch individuals from around the world. Mount Sinai Medical Center, for example, currently hosts postdoctoral fellows from 45 nations, and PhD and MD/PhD students from 25 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia, including places such as Albania, Lebanon, Armenia, Ghana, Thailand, and Taiwan, according to Mount Sinai's associate director of external affairs Debra Kaplan.

"New York City is a magnet especially for scientists from Europe and Asia because of its cosmopolitan character – its style of living, population density, public transportation, and just the city's internationalism," says Savio Woo, professor and chair of gene and cell medicine since 1996, when he joined Mount Sinai from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where he had been for 23 years prior. "While Texas has a rather free-wheeling, anything-is-possible academic atmosphere, and is very attractive to Americans, New York City is more user-friendly if you're from Europe or Asia," Woo says. "If you find a groove here, you can really excel."

Swedish native Torsten Wiesel, who has taught at Harvard University and John Hopkins University, agrees. "As a city, New York has tremendous advantages over other cities; there is a critical scientific environment here that is not found elsewhere," says the Nobel laureate and former Rockefeller University president.

Being in the city exposes researchers to others with different educational backgrounds and enables them to look at a scientific problem from different perspectives, says Moscow native Sergei Sokol, a professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology at Mount Sinai, who recently joined the faculty after 12 years at Harvard Medical School. "There is greater cultural interface here," he says.

"My work only makes sense here, in this urban, culturally diverse environment," says Mary McKay, professor of psychiatry and community medicine at Mount Sinai who works with inner city children and parents to design programs to address these kids' special needs. New York City serves as an international platform, she says. "Being here enables me to meet and work with diverse Latino and Black communities, which also serves as a lab for extending the work to communities in South Africa, Trinidad, and Tobago."