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US bans professor from funding over undisclosed China ties

Professor Tao Li has been banned from receiving US federal funding for allegedly failing to disclose his involvement in Chinese government talent programs while working as a program officer at the National Science Foundation (NSF). During his tenure from 2015 to 2017, Li oversaw US research grants and participated in Chinese initiatives like Dragon Star, which the FBI warns can lead to the misappropriation of foreign knowledge. The investigation, prompted by an FBI briefing in 2019, concluded years later, resulting in the NSF taking action against Li and flagging concerns about his role in awarding grants to other scientists with similar undisclosed affiliations. AI

IMPACT Highlights potential national security risks and regulatory scrutiny in academic research collaborations involving foreign governments.

RANK_REASON Regulatory action taken against an individual by a US government agency due to national security concerns related to foreign affiliations. [lever_c_demoted from significant: ic=1 ai=0.4]

Read on SCMP — Tech →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

US bans professor from funding over undisclosed China ties

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Regulatory action taken against an individual by a US government agency due to national security concerns related to foreign affiliations. [lever_c_demoted from significant: ic=1 ai=0.4]
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COVERAGE [1]

  1. SCMP — Tech TIER_1 English(EN) · Bloomberg ·

    Professor’s alleged role in China programmes leads to ban from US funding

    A professor managed US funding of computer science research for more than two years while failing to disclose that he was simultaneously involved in Chinese government programmes, according to previously unreported documents. The professor, Tao Li, was a programme officer at the …