Sandra Savaglio, 55, after a career abroad now teaches astrophysics at the University of Calabria. The scientist worked at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, landed on the cover of Time magazine as a symbol of the brain drain, and was in Germany at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. From there she returned to Calabria to Merano, a stone's throw from Rende, home of the university.

Today she teaches astrophysics in the same classrooms where she studied and writes popular books. Uta, the companion she met in Germany, does not live with her. "We have been together since 2002. She works in Munich, but as soon as possible we get together," she says.

Savaglio explains why she returned to Calabria: "The professor I graduated with in 1991 asked me to come back. It was 2012 and the government had a brain-return program. I said yes, then I didn't hear anything more. I thought that this is what always happens in Italy, that someone had gotten in the way. Instead, more than a year later I received the message: the procedure was successfully concluded."