Charles Lieber is the the former Chair of Harvard’s chemistry department and renowned nanoscientist. In 2021, he was convicted of lying to federal agents about his ties to China. According to the Boston Globe it was recently announced that he has taken a high level position as a new professor at a Chinese university.
A Boston jury convicted Lieber in December 2021 of two counts of making false statements to the government for denying he had participated in the Thousand Talents Program; two counts of filing false tax returns for failing to report payments from Wuhan University of Technology in 2013 and 2014 for his participation in the program; and two counts of failing to file reports disclosing he had a Chinese bank account. He resigned from Harvard in February 2023.
Charles M. Lieber (born 1959) was an American chemist, inventor, nanotechnologist, and writer. In 2011, Lieber was named the leading chemist in the world for the decade 2000–2010 by Thomson Reuters, based on the impact of his scientific publications. has published over 400 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has edited and contributed to many books on nanoscience.
A federal judge sentenced Lieber in April 2023 to six months of home confinement and ordered him to pay a $50,000 fine and $33,600 in restitution for the back taxes he owed. In December, a judge signed off on Lieber’s request to travel to China for a week in January “for the purposes of discussing potential employment and scientific collaborations.”
At Harvard, Lieber was the principal investigator for the Lieber Research Group at Harvard, which received more than $15 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense and was required to disclose funding received from foreign institutions or governments. Instead, prosecutors alleged he repeatedly denied receiving any foreign funding.
Now, Lieber has joined the full-time faculty at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School on April 28 and was appointed to Tsinghua University‘s highest faculty position, according to the University in China. According to Wikipedia, Lieber is a member of the National Academy of Sciences,[87] the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[88] the National Academy of Engineering,[89] the National Academy of Medicine,[90] the National Academy of Inventors,[91] and an elected Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2015).[92] He is an elected Fellow of the Materials Research Society, American Chemical Society (Inaugural Class), Institute of Physics, International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), American Association for the Advancement of Science, and World Technology Network, and Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society.[93] In addition he belongs to the American Physical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), Optica, Biophysical Society and the Society for Neuroscience. Lieber is Co-editor of the journal Nano Letters, and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of a number of science and technology journals.[5] He is also a sitting member of the international advisory board of the department of materials science and engineering at Tel Aviv University.[94]
Jeffrey Newman is a whistleblower lawyer representing doctors, nurses and therapists who have become whistleblowers reporting Medicare and Medicaid fraud in False Claims Act (Qui Tam) cases. He also represents whistleblowers in tariff fraud cases and military contract fraud cases. also a frequent writer on issues relating to events affecting the world economy. Jeff can be reached at Jeff@JeffNewmanLaw.com or at 617-823-3217
