Charles Lieber, the former chair of the chemistry and chemical biology department at Harvard University, pleaded not guilty to federal charges of making false statements, the Boston Globe reports.
Lieber was charged in January with making false claims about funds he received from China as part of its Thousand Talents Program to the Department of Defense and for mischaracterizing his role at Wuhan University of Technology.
His arrest came as the US stepped up investigations into unreported ties between federally funded researchers and foreign organizations, particularly the Chinese government. Some 54 researchers have been fired or resigned in the wake of National Institutes of Health inquiries, as Science reported last week. Researchers, for instance, have left MD Anderson Cancer Center, Emory University, and the Moffitt Cancer Center for failing to disclose outside funding.
According to the Globe, Lieber entered two pleas of not guilty. "The government has this wrong," his attorney Marc Mukasey tells the Globe in an email. "Professor Lieber has dedicated his life to science and to his students.