Explainer: who is Charles Lieber and why does his case matter for US research?

The conviction of top chemist Charles Lieber in December 2021 on charges related to millions of dollars in funding that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) claims he received from the Chinese government shocked the research community in the US and beyond. Lieber joined Harvard as a full professor in 1992 and had run the university’s chemistry department for years. His case is the most prominent of a slew of US academic scientists pursued by the DOJ for supposedly using their talents to benefit China and enrich themselves. These prosecutions were brought under the US government’s now-defunct China Initiative. That controversial programme resulted in some convictions, including that of former Ohio State University rheumatology researcher Song Guo Zheng, sentenced to 37 months in prison. But the bulk of professors charged under the scheme were never tried or convicted yet still saw their careers and personal lives turned upside down.