Charges dismissed against MIT’s Gang Chen

Abstract

A federal judge has dismissed felony charges against Massachusetts Institute of Technology mechanical engineering professor Gang Chen involving his interactions with China. Chen was charged under the China Initiative, a Department of Justice program to address economic espionage . Similar to other academic researchers charged under the program, Chen faced charges of wire fraud for submitting false documents electronically, failing to report a foreign bank account, and filing a false tax return. “We recently obtained additional information pertaining to the materiality of Professor Chen’s alleged omissions in the context of the grant review process at issue in this case,” US attorney Rachael S. Rollins said in a Jan. 20 statement announcing the dismissal . “After a careful assessment of this new information in the context of all the evidence, our office has concluded that we can no longer meet our burden of proof at trial.” Chen’s case stands in stark