Cheat sheet: MIT professor charged with hiding work for China
MIT professor Gang Chen didn’t disclose his connections to China as is required on federal grant purposes, US authorities stated.
A Massachusetts Institute of Know-how (MIT) professor was arrested and charged Thursday with hiding work he did for the Chinese language authorities whereas he was additionally receiving United States {dollars} for his nanotechnology analysis.
Gang Chen, 56, was arrested by federal brokers at his dwelling in Cambridge, Massachusetts on fees together with wire fraud, officers stated. Brokers executed search warrants at his dwelling and his workplace on the college, stated Joseph Bonavolonta, head of the Boston FBI workplace.
Whereas working for MIT, Chen entered into undisclosed contracts and held appointments affiliated with the Folks’s Republic of China (PRC), together with as an “abroad professional” for the Chinese language authorities on the request of the PRC Consulate Workplace in New York, authorities stated. Lots of these roles had been “expressly meant to additional the PRC’s scientific and technological objectives”, stated authorities in courtroom paperwork.
Chen didn’t disclose his connections to China as is required on federal grant purposes, authorities stated. He and his analysis group collected about $29m in international {dollars}, together with hundreds of thousands from a Chinese language government-funded public analysis college, whereas getting $19m in grants from US federal companies for his work at MIT since 2013, authorities stated.
“It’s not unlawful to collaborate with international researchers. It’s unlawful to lie about it,” Massachusetts US Legal professional Andrew Lelling informed reporters.
An e-mail looking for remark was despatched to Chen’s legal professional.
MIT stated it’s “deeply distressed” by Chen’s arrest.
“MIT believes the integrity of analysis is a elementary accountability, and we take significantly issues about improper affect in U.S. analysis. Prof. Chen is a long-serving and extremely revered member of the analysis neighborhood, which makes the federal government’s allegations towards him all of the extra distressing,” the college stated in an announcement.
Chen’s arrest comes almost a yr after federal authorities arrested one other nanotechnology professional at a prestigious college within the Boston space. Harvard College professor Charles Lieber was charged final January with mendacity about his ties to China’s Thousand Skills Plan, a programme designed to lure folks with information of international know-how and mental property to China.
Lieber’s legal professional has denied the allegations, calling the professor the “sufferer on this case, not the perpetrator”.
The circumstances are a part of a sample of prosecutions by the US Division of Justice towards researchers at US universities who’re accused of concealing their skilled relationships with Chinese language establishments. Dozens of lecturers working within the US have been charged in circumstances that usually accuse them of failing to reveal analysis grants they’d acquired from universities in China.
