University Pays $700,000 to Settle With NASA Over Professor’s Undisclosed Ties to China

The NASA logo is displayed at the Earth Information Center exhibit at NASA headquarters in Washington on June 21, 2023. Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

The University of Delaware on Dec. 16 settled with NASA after allegedly failing to disclose a professor’s ties to and support from the Chinese regime.

In 2020, NASA awarded the university a grant to establish a research center focused on the use of satellites to collect weather, climate, and ocean data, to better understand how sea-level rise affects U.S. coastlines.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, the university certified that no funds from the NASA grant would be “used to participate, collaborate, or coordinate with the People’s Republic of China.” However, the university allegedly failed to disclose that the center’s lead researcher, Xiao-Hai Yan, had significant ties to Chinese institutions and funding while the grant was active.

The settlement revealed that between June 2020 and August 2023, Yan was simultaneously a faculty member at Xiamen University, one of the 75 institutions directly controlled by China’s Ministry of Education. During this period, Yan also applied for and received funding from the National Science Foundation of China and China’s State Oceanic Administration.

Additionally, Yan was a participant in China’s Thousand Talents Program, an initiative offering lucrative financial benefits and research advantages to recruit scientists from abroad to bolster China’s economic and military development. The program has raised national security and academic integrity concerns in the United States and has prompted scores of federal investigations and prosecutions over recent years.

The university agreed to pay $715,580 to the U.S. government to resolve the allegations but did not admit to any wrongdoing.

The university said it is “proud of its strong record of compliance” in overseeing sponsored research and remains committed to “promoting and safeguarding the responsible pursuit of scientific research.”

“The university relies, in part, on the candor and complete disclosures of individuals involved in the grant process,” a spokesperson said in a statement to The Epoch Times. “As noted in the release, this settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by the university, but rather a strategic decision to avoid costly and distracting litigation.”

The settlement was a coordinated effort between the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware and NASA’s Office of Inspector General, the space agency’s internal watchdog.

“Federal law requires universities, institutions, and researchers to make disclosures, including certain foreign affiliations, when applying for grants so that the granting agencies can assess whether to fund their research and development,” David Weiss, U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, said in a statement.

The FBI has detailed how the Chinese government uses expert recruitment programs, such as the Thousand Talents Program, to attract individuals working or studying abroad who have access to high-priority research or proprietary technologies. The FBI estimates that China operates more than 200 similar initiatives, with some funded unwittingly by U.S. taxpayers.

A 2019 Senate subcommittee report also highlighted numerous instances of misconduct by Thousand Talents participants. These include downloading sensitive research files before leaving for China, falsifying information on U.S. grant applications, and failing to disclose funding received from Beijing.

One of the most high-profile cases in recent years involved Xiang Haitao, a former researcher at Monsanto. The Thousand Talents participant was arrested in November 2019 after returning to the United States from China, where he had worked on using a proprietary U.S. technology to boost farm output. In 2022, Xiang was sentenced to 29 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $150,000 fine for conspiring to commit economic espionage.

Another widely reported case was that of Charles Lieber, former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department. Lieber was arrested on campus in 2020 and charged with lying to federal investigators about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Program and his undisclosed ties to the Wuhan University of Technology. In April 2023, he was sentenced to two days in jail with two years of supervised release and received a $50,000 fine.