Boston:
A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in nanotechnology study was arrested on U.S. charges that he failed to disclose his ties to the Chinese government when searching for federal grant dollars.
Federal prosecutors in Boston on Thursday charged Gang Chen, a Chinese-born mechanical engineer and nanotechnologist, with defrauding the U.S. Department of Energy when searching for grants and failing to disclose a foreign bank account on a tax return.
Following his arrest, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed search warrants at his house in Cambridge and workplace at MIT, exactly where he is the director of the MIT Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering Laboratory.
Chen was later released on bail. MIT in a statement mentioned it was “deeply distressed” by the arrest. Chen’s lawyer, Robert Fisher, mentioned the 56-year-old “loves the United States and looks forward to vigorously defending these allegations.”
The case is the most current to emerge from a U.S. Justice Department crackdown on Chinese influence inside universities amid issues about spying and intellectual home theft by the Chinese government.
Of the FBI’s 5,000 active counter-intelligence investigations, almost half are China-associated, mentioned Joseph Bonavolonta, who oversees the agency’s Boston field workplace.
Prosecutors mentioned Chen was involved in different efforts to market China’s technological and scientific improvement, like acting as an “overseas expert” for the Chinese government at the request of its New York consulate.
Prosecutors mentioned he received dollars from different Chinese entities and helped overview and assess grant applications for the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC), which operates similarly to U.S. grant-funding agencies.
But prosecutors mentioned he in no way disclosed his work for the NNSFC or other Chinese affiliations when he applied for Energy Department grants.
Since 2013, different federal agencies have awarded more than $19 million in grants to fund Chen’s study, prosecutors mentioned.
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