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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
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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.

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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.

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