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. Chinese scientist gets 10 years in US prison for engineered rice theft A sentencing date was not immediately set. During his trial, Zhang’s lawyer said the case against him had turned into a felony criminal prosecution because the federal government was paranoid about China stealing US technology. He was indicted for taking US$600,000 in grants, the US Justice Department had said in 2017. Xi’s push for top university rankings is self-defeating The Roanoke Times reported that Zhang had taught at Virginia Tech since 2005 and became a US citizen in 2011.