Hu’s arrest is the second arrest in a month of a U.S. academic over an alleged failure to disclose ties to Chinese universities. In late January, Charles Lieber, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested for allegedly lying about funding he received from a Chinese state-sponsored recruitment program.
“This is just the latest case involving professors or researchers concealing their affiliations with China from their American employers and the U.S. government,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in the statement.
According to Hu’s indictment, the associate professor self-identified as a BJUT professor in research papers, certain CVs, and patent applications in China. While working as an associate professor at UTK, Hu also supervised BJUT graduate students and the operation of a laboratory at the university, while working on projects sponsored by the Chinese regime at BJUT, the document said.
Prosecutors allege Hu lied to UTK and made fraudulent omissions about his ties with BJUT. This caused the American university to falsely certify to NASA that UTK was in compliance with federal law relating to the agency’s China funding restrictions, the DOJ added.
Hu faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each of the wire fraud counts, if convicted. He also faces up to five years in prison on each of the false statement counts.
UTK did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Federal authorities are increasingly zeroing in on U.S. academics and researchers over ties with China-based institutions and China’s state-sponsored recruitment program known as the “Thousand Talents Program” due to concerns that it facilitates the transfer of sensitive U.S. research and intellectual property to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Since last July, the Department of Education has launched investigations into foreign funding at several U.S. universities, including Harvard and Yale, alleging that the institutes failed to disclose hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign sources of funding, as required by law.
