University of Maryland pays $500,000 settlement for allegedly failing to disclose researchers funding from Chinese companies
The University of Maryland, College Park will pay a $500,000 settlement for allegedly failing to disclose the foreign funding of three researchers who simultaneously received federal grants, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Maryland.
Federal prosecutors alleged that the researchers, who collectively received five federal research grants between 2015 and 2020, were also the principal investigators on projects funded by three Chinese companies, Huawei Technologies, Taobao and Alibaba.
For Huawei, a big technology company, the Maryland researcher was studying “high energy density FeF3 conversion cathode materials and Li metal anodes,” according to a news release. For Taobao, an online shopping platform, the research was “large-scale behavior learning for dense crowds.” For Alibaba, a large online retailer, the research was about the “cyber-manufacturing of customized apparel.”
The federal grants were from the National Science Foundation, which provides about a quarter of federal grants to colleges and universities, and the U.S. Army, both of which require grant applicants to disclose all current and pending support, including foreign government sources, received by their institution, according to the release.
“Complete and accurate disclosures are essential to federal agencies that make decisions on awarding federal grants,” Erek L. Barron, United States attorney for the District of Maryland, said in the release. “Those individuals and universities that knowingly fail to do so skew the grant awarding process in their favor and will be held accountable.”
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