VietJoy

FILE - People walk past an entrance to Widener Library, behind, on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 16, 2019.

The U.S. government on Tuesday charged a Harvard University department chair and a Boston University employee with failing to disclose their dealings with Chinese research agencies while receiving federal research funding.

Prosecutors charged Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, with lying about his participation in China's Thousand Talents Plan.

According to a court filing, Lieber made materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements to the U.S. Department of Defense about his role in the plan, and to the National Institutes of Health about that role and also his affiliation with Wuhan University of Technology in China.

Lieber was charged with one count of making false statements to a U.S. government agency, according to court records. They also charged a Boston University employee with lying about working for the Chinese army, a Justice Department representative told reporters.

They are the latest in a series of academics the United States has criminally charged for their dealings with China.

Federal prosecutors last month accused a Chinese medical student of trying to smuggle cancer research specimens out of the country and in August charged a University of Kansas researched for failing to disclose ties to a Chinese university.