Diaspora communities are playing an invaluable role in the establishment of new science and technology companies in their home countries and abroad, experts said at the AAAS Annual Meeting.

The computer algorithm that led to the Google search engine and a multi-billion-dollar business was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were working as graduate students under part of a $4.5 million National Science Foundation grant for a digital library project at Stanford University.