'We can't compete': why universities are losing their best AI scientists

A handful of companies are luring away top researchers, but academics say they are killing the geese that lay the golden eggs

It was the case of the missing PhD student.

As another academic year got under way at Imperial College London, a senior professor was bemused at the absence of one of her students. He had worked in her lab for three years and had one more left to complete his studies. But he had stopped coming in.