On January 20, 2021 — almost one year exactly after the high-profile arrest of Harvard University’s Charles Lieber — the Department of Justice announced the indictment of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor, this time rocking the PhDs on the other end of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gang Chen, a tenured mechanical engineering professor at MIT, was accused, among other things, of failing to disclose $19 million that he had received from a Chinese university.MIT said that the $19 million went not to Chen but to MIT, see here At first glance, the case had striking similarities to Lieber’s: like Lieber, Chen was known for his work on nanotechnology, a field, which was identified in China’s 2016 Five-Year Plan as a priority, that manipulates infinitesimal matter — such as atoms or individual molecules — for industrial purposes. While Lieber was working on “nanowires” — which can be used both in the brain to repair human neurons or in semiconduct
Subscribe or login to read the rest.
Subscribers get full access to:
- Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
- A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
- A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our
Subscriptions page for details.