On Jan. 6, Zaosong Zheng, a former researcher at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, was ordered to leave the United States and return to China after being charged with lying to federal agents about allegedly smuggling cancer research. Zheng agreed to not return to the U.S. for 10 years.
Zhengâs sentencing, however, marks merely the latest development in an ongoing crackdown by the United States government and American universities on âacademic espionage,â or the transmission of academic research by scientists at American universities to foreign governments. Multiple Harvard affiliates, including former Chemistry Department Chair Charles M. Lieber, have been subject to criminal proceedings due to alleged misbehavior.
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Two recent cases illustrate that the United States government’s push against alleged instances of illicit tech transfer to China continues unabated. On January 14, the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts announced that a mechanical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was arrested and charged with wire fraud, failing to file a foreign bank account report, and making a false statement in a tax return, in relation to his alleged relationships with Chinese entities. The day before, on January 13, a chief scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center plead guilty to one count of making false statements about his relationship with the Chinese government in the Manhattan federal court in New York.
Zaosong Zheng, a former researcher at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, was sentenced on Wednesday for lying to federal agents in connection with his attempt to take cancer research to China.
U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper sentenced Zheng to time served approximately 87 days and three years of supervised release, as well as ordering his removal from the United States.
Zheng’s lawyers wrote in a Tuesday sentencing memo that Zheng has tickets to return to China Wednesday and has agreed to not return to the U.S. for at least 10 years.
Zheng a 31-year-old who arrived in the United States from China in 2018 pleaded guilty to lying to customs officials last month. On December 10, 2019, Zheng was arrested at Boston Logan International Airport after customs officials found vials of biological material in a sock packed in his suitcase. Beth Israel fired Zheng following his arrest.