Interesting observation about Moscow having a lot of research labs. I never thought to wonder why Moscow had so many but this is an interesting point. What do you mean by join study program? Can you explain? Also, is there anything that stops top talent from moving to Silicon Valley (or some place else?) after they finish school?
Many top universities here are not like self-contained research universities of the West — they mostly deal with education, and research is conducted at non-educational academic institutions. So, for their Masters work, and maybe earlier, students do research in various organizations that have contracts with university. These are either academic institutions or commercial research departments or tech companies like Yandex.
As for SV, it’s not that simple, it seems — most emigrants that I know either got job at something like Swiss Google after building a solid resume here or got into some academic program (PhD or postdoc) abroad.
