Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Jury finds University of Kansas chemical engineer guilty of hiding ties to China

After a two-week trial, Feng ‘Franklin’ Tao was convicted on four of eight charges — but a judge is reviewing the case.
  1. Sara Reardon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

University of Kansas (KU) chemical engineer Feng ‘Franklin’ Tao, who was accused of hiding ties to a Chinese university, has been found guilty of wire fraud and making false statements to the US government. On 7 April, a jury for the US district court of Kansas found that Tao, currently on unpaid leave from KU in Lawrence, had committed research-grant fraud by failing to tell his employer and federal funding agencies about an alleged faculty appointment in China.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 604, 410-411 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01022-5

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 11 April 2022: An earlier version of this story labelled the opening image as being of the Robert J. Cole Federal Courthouse. It is the Robert J. Dole Federal Courthouse. An earlier version of this story also said that of the 77 known China Initiative cases reported by MIT Technology Review in December 2021, 19 involved economic espionage and the rest involved research-integrity issues. The story has been updated to clarify that the remainder also involved corruption and other issues.

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

  • Technician - Senior Technician in Cell and Molecular Biology

    APPLICATION CLOSING DATE: 24.05.2024 Human Technopole (HT) is a distinguished life science research institute founded and supported by the Italian ...

    Milan (IT)

    Human Technopole

  • Postdoctoral Fellow

    The Dubal Laboratory of Neuroscience and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) seeks postdoctoral fellows to investigate the ...

    San Francisco, California

    University of California, San Francsico

  • Postdoctoral Associate

    Houston, Texas (US)

    Baylor College of Medicine (BCM)

  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow

    Description Applications are invited for a postdoctoral fellow position at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health, to participate...

    Toronto (City), Ontario (CA)

    Sinai Health

  • Postdoctoral Research Associate - Surgery

    Memphis, Tennessee

    St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (St. Jude)

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links