Virginia Tech professor Yiheng Percival Zhang convicted of swindling US grants for research he’d already done in China
- Bio-engineer Yiheng Percival Zhang took US$600,000 in US federal grants to research artificial sweeteners
- But the work had already been conducted at the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he was also a researcher
A former Virginia Tech professor has been found guilty of conspiring to commit fraud, making false statements and obstruction for taking US federal grants to research work he had already completed in China.
Yiheng Percival Zhang was a biological engineering professor. In 2017, he was charged with defrauding Virginia Tech, the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy.
The complaint alleged that Zhang filed for grants to get money for work on artificial sweeteners that he had already completed at the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he was also employed as a researcher.
A judge released his findings last week after a bench trial in September in US District Court in Roanoke, Virginia.