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Professor’s alleged role in China programmes leads to ban from US funding
Academic Tao Li was a programme officer at the National Science Foundation, a job that included overseeing the awarding of research grants.
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Academic Tao Li was a programme officer at the National Science Foundation, a job that included overseeing the awarding of research grants
A professor managed US funding of computer science research for more than two years while failing to disclose that he was simultaneously involved in Chinese government programmes, according to previously unreported documents.
The professor, Tao Li, was a programme officer at the National Science Foundation from 2015 to 2017, a job that included overseeing the awarding of grants for research in areas such as hardware, software and algorithms.
During that time, Li took part in two Chinese talent plans, according to a report by the NSF’s Office of Inspector General. The FBI has warned that such plans can incentivise members to steal or misappropriate foreign knowledge or technology.
In addition, Li was involved in awarding US research grants to at least seven other scientists who also allegedly failed to disclose their participation in one of the Chinese talent plans, called Dragon Star, according to a separate set of documents detailing US national security concerns with Li and such plans.
The FBI first flagged its concerns about Li’s suspected involvement in Dragon Star to NSF leadership in 2019, according to a former CIA analyst who said he took part in the meeting.
The inspector general’s office began an investigation based on the tip, but it would be about seven years from the time of the FBI briefing before the probe concluded and the NSF took action based on its findings.
The Justice Department declined a referral for a criminal prosecution in 2024, according to the report. The NSF in May banned Li from federal funding for six years, according to communications reviewed by Bloomberg. The agency did not announce the ban, though there is an entry on the government website sam.gov for Li’s debarment.
By the time the NSF made its decision, Li had already embarked on a new pursuit: at a military-affiliated university in central China, where he now runs an artificial intelligence research centre.
Reached by email, Li said the grants given to the other scientists who took part in the talent plan were awarded “based on the merit,” and were “recommended and concurred by the entire panel” involved in the process.
“During my tenure as an NSF Programme Director, I diligently fulfilled my responsibilities – including proposal reviews, funding award management, and annual report evaluations – alongside my colleagues, never once facing any complaints or objections,” Li said in an email.
The details surrounding the US investigation into Li and subsequent decision to ban him from federal funding, as well as his current status in China, have not been previously reported.
Bloomberg reviewed more than 30 documents dating back a decade that the NSF inspector general had compiled for its investigation into Li. The documents were provided by the House Select Committee on China, which is doing a broader investigation into government bans on scientists.
Bloomberg also reviewed other documents laying out the government’s national security concerns about Li and Chinese talent programmes.
“This case represents one of the most egregious research security failures uncovered to date,” said House China Committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican. “It is a stark reminder that our adversaries will exploit vulnerabilities wherever they exist, including within the institutions responsible for safeguarding federal research.”
Liu Chang, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in a statement that while he is “not aware of the specifics” regarding Li, “China consistently opposes the politicisation and weaponisation of academic research and scientific and technological exchanges”.
The US Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the inspector general’s office said it does not comment on investigations. The NSF declined to comment.
The NSF’s debarring of Li follows a controversial effort by the first Trump administration to tackle what some US officials have said is a concerted effort by China to steal or otherwise misappropriate American scientific advances.
The “China Initiative” backfired after several high-profile cases against academics and researchers collapsed and critics claimed the effort was discriminatory and scientifically chilling. The initiative was scrapped in 2022 following a review.
Some of the prior court cases brought against academics or researchers accused them of accepting US taxpayer money for research, while allegedly failing to disclose their involvement in Chinese talent plans.
Li also failed to disclose his involvement in talent plans, according to the inspector general’s report. But what makes the allegations against him unusual is that he simultaneously held a position in which he helped to decide which scientists got US research money.
Before he came to the US for graduate school, Li earned his undergraduate degree in computer engineering in 1993 from China’s Northwestern Polytechnical University, according to an archived professor page from his former employer, the University of Florida.
It is among China’s “Seven Sons of National Defence”, elite universities with deep ties to the People’s Liberation Army. In 2001, the US Commerce Department imposed restrictions on exporting technology to the school due to national security concerns.
By then, Li had already moved to the US, where he obtained a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004, according to the archived biography and a university spokesman.
He then joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he went on to become a tenured professor, according to NSF documents and a university spokesman.
From 2006 to 2009, Li won a handful of awards from Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp., according to his biography, in addition to a prestigious prize from the NSF for junior researchers “who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education”.
A Microsoft spokesman confirmed Li’s awards, while an IBM representative said the company gave such prizes but was not able to verify if Li was a recipient given the time that had passed.
Li has won a total of US$4.9 million in research funding from the NSF since 2010, according to data from the agency’s inspector general, citing 15 awards.
In August 2015, Li took a temporary leave from the University of Florida to become an NSF programme director, where he managed the process for awarding US funding for computer science research.
Programme officers screen proposals, identify peer reviewers, analyse their input and make recommendations to the division director about whether NSF should fund them, according to NSF’s website. He was involved in the process of awarding about US$80 million in grants at NSF, according to the documents flagging national security concerns.
What the NSF did not know at the time was that Li was already taking part in China’s Dragon Star Plan, according to the inspector general’s report. Li was involved in Dragon Star from 2012 to 2016, the report says.
Years later, FBI counter-intelligence agents assessed that Dragon Star was a Chinese talent plan specifically created to target NSF research, according to a document viewed by Bloomberg describing US concerns with such programmes.
The Dragon Star programme in particular “showcases how talent recruits can expand Beijing’s technology transfer apparatus from within the US federal research funding system”, according to an October 2020 report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which is a bipartisan body created by Congress.
“On its face, this certainly looks like a textbook example of China’s technology transfer playbook working to their favour,” said Helen Toner, executive director at Georgetown University’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology.
Toner reviewed the subjects of Li’s research papers at Bloomberg’s request and said his pursuits appeared “quite wide-ranging”, including topics such as AI use online as well as areas that could be more strategic in the US-China AI competition. Those include papers on data centre efficiency, hardware architectures and quantum machine learning.
