Former Fla. professor indicted for concealing ties to China in securing grant

Former University of Florida professor Lin Yang has been indicted for concealing ties to China in order to obtain a federal grant and continue working in the United States.

Yang’s indictment, unsealed Wednesday, says he is facing six counts of wire fraud and four counts of making false statements to an agency of the United States.

Yang was receiving support from the Chinese government and starting his own company in China while he was the principal investigator in a research project in Florida, according to the Justice Department.

His research was helping him develop “MuscleMiner,” an imaging informatics tool that was being funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a $1.75 million grant, the indictment said.

Yang was using the research for the benefit of his company in China and failed to disclose his foreign ties, as required in progress reports to the NIH, according to prosecutors.

“The taxpayer dollars that funded Yang’s research were intended to benefit the health and well-being of U.S. citizens. But our indictment alleges that Yang engaged in acts of deliberate deception so that he could also further the research goals of the Chinese Communist government and advance his own business interests,” said U.S. Attorney Lawrence Keefe for the Northern District of Florida in a statement Wednesday.

While he was at the university from 2014 to 2019, Yang also applied to the People’s Republic of China’s Thousand Talents Program, a program that was “established by the Chinese government to encourage the transfer of original ideas, technology, and intellectual property from foreign institutions, such as American universities,” prosecutors said.

The indictment alleges Yang did not disclose when he got accepted into the program so that he would not lose his job or the money he was receiving for his research.

Yang has been in China since the summer of 2019, prosecutors said. It is not known if he will come back to the United States to face charges.