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KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (AP) – The University of Tennessee at Knoxville has offered to reinstate a professor who was acquitted of federal charges that accused him of hiding his relationship with a Chinese university while receiving research grants from NASA, a letter obtained by the Knoxville told News Sentinel.
The newspaper reports that in the October 14 letter, Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor John Zomchick offered Anming Hu a tenure as a full engineering professor, along with a salary arrears and payment of a immigration lawyer. Hu was also offered $ 200,000 over three years to restore his research program, and an explanation of the university’s support for his work visa as a naturalized Canadian citizen, according to the report.
Hu was arrested in February 2020 on charges of wire fraud and misrepresentation. The judge declared the trial canceled after the jury’s deadlock in June. Prosecutors had filed a notice stating that they intended to retry the case, but the judge acquitted Hu last month.
The arrest was part of a broader Justice Department crackdown under then-President Donald Trump’s administration on university researchers suspected of concealing their links to Chinese institutions.
Hu started working for UT Knoxville in 2013 and was later invited by another professor to help apply for a NASA research grant. This grant request was not accepted, but two subsequent requests were. A 2012 law prohibits NASA from collaborating with China or Chinese companies. The government interpreted this ban to include Chinese universities, and Hu was a faculty member at Beijing University of Technology in addition to his position at UT.
Prosecutors attempted to show that Hu deliberately concealed his post at the Chinese university when applying for NASA-funded research grants. Hu’s attorney, Philip Lomonaco, argued at trial that Hu didn’t think he needed to list his part-time summer job on a disclosure form and said no one at UT had never told him otherwise.
Lomonaco told the Knoxville News Sentinel earlier this month that Hu wanted his job back.
A judge ruled that even assuming Hu intended to cheat his affiliation with this second university, there is no evidence that Hu intended to harm NASA. He also noted that NASA obtained the research it funded from Hu, and that there was no evidence that Hu took money from China or made someone in China work on it. projects.
Additionally, the judge cited evidence that NASA’s funding restrictions were unclear.
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