Gang Chen (engineer)

Gang Chen (Chinese: 陈刚; pinyin: Chén Gāng) is a Chinese-born American mechanical engineer and nanotechnologist. At MIT, he is the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering and he was head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering from July 23, 2013 to June 30, 2018.[1][2] He directed the Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC Center), an Energy Frontier Research Center formerly funded by the US Department of Energy.[3] Chen is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. In January 2021, Chen was charged by the United States Department of Justice with failing to disclose alleged connections to several educational programs in China in filing a United States Department of Energy grant application, as well as omissions in his Internal Revenue Service tax filings.[4][5]

The native form of this personal name is Chen Gang. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Gang Chen
Alma mater
Known forNanotechnology, Thermoelectricity, Nanoscale heat transfer
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsNanotechnology, Heat Transfer
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisorChang-lin Tien
Websiteweb.mit.edu/nanoengineering/

Education

Chen received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Energy and Power Engineering Department of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, respectively in 1984 and 1987. He subsequently received his PhD degree in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, in 1993, under the supervision of Professor Chang-lin Tien.[6]

Research career

Chen was an assistant professor at Duke University and a tenured associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles before being recruited by MIT in 2001. Chen has made major contributions to thermoelectricity,[7] nanotechnology,[8] and thermal engineering.[9]

Awards and honors

Chen is a recipient of the K.C. Wong Education Foundation fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship (2002-3). He has received the NSF Young Investigator Award, an R&D 100 award (2008), and the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award (2008). He is a fellow of the AAAS, the APS, and the ASME. In 2010, he was elected a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for contributions to heat transfer at the nanoscale and to thermoelectric energy conversion technology.[10] He was elected as an academician of Academia Sinica (Taiwan) in the Division of Engineering Science in 2014.[11] In 2014, he also received the Nukiyama Memorial Award of the Heat Transfer Society of Japan.[12] He was elected as a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on April 2018.[13]

Federal indictment and ensuing controversy

On January 14, 2021, Chen was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and charged with failing to disclose alleged connections to several educational programs in China in filing a U.S. Department of Energy grant application, as well as omissions in his IRS filings.[4] [5] Chen was charged with failing to report contacts with Chinese entities to the U.S. Department of Energy, leading to an allegation of wire fraud, with failing to file a foreign bank account report (FBAR) in some tax years, and with making false statements on his tax returns. The charge of wire fraud is tied to alleged omissions from federal grant proposal form (Current and pending support) that was submitted electronically.

In response to these charges, the President of MIT, L. Rafael Reif wrote to the MIT community stating: "For all of us who know Gang, this news is surprising, deeply distressing and hard to understand." [14]

The FBI documents allege that Chen received $19 million from China's Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech).[4][5] On 22 January 2021, MIT's President released a second statement pointing out that these funds went to not Chen, but to MIT itself to support a departmental research collaboration with SUSTech which Chen simply directs on MIT's behalf.[15] [16]

The indictment provoked criticism. More than 170 MIT faculty members submitted a letter to MIT's President [17] questioning merits of the FBI’s case and stating: "The defense of Gang Chen is the defense of the scientific enterprise that we all hold dear." [15][18] An opinion article in Bloomberg remarked: "Ever since the Nazis drove Europe’s greatest minds into exile, U.S. science has flourished by attracting talent from overseas." [19] An MIT researcher stated that: "The [Dept. of Justice's] China Initiative fundamentally misunderstands both research and international collaboration." [20]

References
  1. "Gang Chen named head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering". MIT News. Cambridge, MA. 2013-07-23. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
  2. "Evelyn Wang named head of Department of Mechanical Engineering". MIT News. Cambridge, MA. 2018-06-22. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
  3. "NanoEngineering Group, Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT".
  4. "MIT Professor Arrested and Charged with Grant Fraud". U.S. Attorney's Office, Massachusetts. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts. 14 January 2021. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  5. Matthew J. McCarthy (13 January 2021). "Affidavit of Special Agent Matthew J. McCarthy" (PDF). documentcloud.org. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  6. Chen, Gang (1993). Microscale thermal phenomena in optical and optoelectronic thin-film devices (PhD thesis). University of California, Berkeley. OCLC 892822584. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  7. Minnich, A. J.; Dresselhaus, M. S.; Ren, Z. F.; Chen, G. (2009). "Bulk nanostructured thermoelectric materials: current research and future prospects". Energy Environ. Sci. 2 (5): 466–479. doi:10.1039/B822664B. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  8. Chen, Gang (1998). "Thermal conductivity and ballistic-phonon transport in the cross-plane direction of superlattices". Phys. Rev. B. 57 (23): 14958–14973. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.57.14958. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  9. Ghasemi, Hadi; Ni, George; Marconnet, Amy Marie; Loomis, James; Yerci, Selcuk; Miljkovic, Nenad; Chen, Gang (21 July 2014). "Solar steam generation by heat localization". Nature Communications. 5: 4449. doi:10.1038/ncomms5449. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  10. "Members of National Academy of Engineering".
  11. "Academician of Academia Sinica in Division of Engineering Science".
  12. "The Nukiyama Memorial Award". The Heat Transfer Society of Japan. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  13. "American Academy of Arts and Sciences".
  14. Reif, Rafael (14 January 2021). "Distressing news about Professor Gang Chen". MIT News. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  15. Fernandes, Deirdre (22 January 2021). "MIT president and faculty members defend professor arrested for China ties". Boston Globe. Boston, Massachusetts. Retrieved 23 January 2021. These funds are about advancing the work of a group of colleagues, and the research and educational mission of MIT.
  16. O'Leary, Mary Beth (19 June 2018). "MIT and SUSTech announce Centers for Mechanical Engineering Research and Education at MIT and SUSTech". MIT News. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  17. 170 MIT Faculty (26 January 2021). "MIT Faculty Letter to President Reif in Support of Gang Chen" (PDF). MIT Faculty Newsletter. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  18. Barry, Ellen (26 January 2021). "A Scientist Is Arrested, and Academics Push Back". The New York Times. New York, New York. Retrieved 29 January 2021. The U.S. is playing into China’s hands by prosecuting researchers it ought to be welcoming.
  19. Postrel, Virginia (27 January 2021). "Criminalizing Science Is Really Dumb". Bloomberg. New York, New York. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  20. Larkin, Max (29 January 2021). "MIT Faculty Rally Around Professor Charged With Concealing China Ties". WBUR. Boston, Massachusetts. Retrieved 29 January 2021. Most of the time, the more you read, the more you understand. In this case, the more I read of that complaint, the less I understood.
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