USCIS approved an outstanding researcher petition I filed on behalf of a professor and scientist in the field of pharmaceutical sciences and drug delivery. The challenge in this case was showing that the scientist’s research experience in the industry (a private pharmaceutical company) satisfied the regulations requiring three years of experience in research. USCIS does not consider engineering or product design as research for these purposes. However, we were able to demonstrate that during the course of the scientist’s employment in private industry, he contributed to the understanding and development of applications for pharmaceutical dosage forms.
The key in any outstanding researcher petition is to prove how the alien has received “international” recognition for novel contributions to his or her field. The regulations provide a list of six criteria and require that the alien satisfy two of these criteria. Satisfying the criteria itself is not enough (prizes, publications, memberships, serving as a judge of others, original or scholarly research contributions, published material about the alien). USCIS is now requiring an increasing level of evidence of the international nature of this evidence.
In this case, as in most of the petitions I file, I provide prodigious data on the international aspect of these criteria, including recommendation letters from experts worldwide, pie charts showing the international breakdown of citations and information about the international circulation of publications.