Charles Lieber was a Harvard scientist. Now, he leads a brain-computer lab in China
Charles M Lieber, a former Harvard scientist convicted in the United States for lying about his ties to China, has resurfaced in Shenzhen, China. Lieber is now leading advanced research in brain-computer interfaces for China. Lieber has been actively looking for a job in Beijing since at least last June
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Charles Lieber leaves federal court after he and two Chinese nationals were charged with lying about their alleged links to the Chinese government, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. January 30, 2020. Reuters
Charles M Lieber was once an internationally celebrated chemist who held Harvard’s highest faculty rank as a University Professor. He was convicted of lying to federal authorities about his ties to China in 2021.
Today, Lieber is working as a professor at a Chinese university, the job that he took last week, according to reports. He now leads a brain-computer lab in China.
Lieber began his new position at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School in Shenzhen, China, on Tuesday (April 28), where he now holds the institution’s highest faculty rank. The scientist has been actively looking for a job in China since at least last June.
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According to a press release, Lieber said, “Shenzhen’s dynamism and innovative spirit align perfectly with my vision to co-create a global scientific hub here.”
Lieber was convicted in 2021 on six felony charges for hiding his connections to the Thousand Talents Program (TTP), a Chinese government scheme aimed at attracting overseas researchers to the country.
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In 2023, he was sentenced to one day in prison, fined $50,000 (around Rs 4,750,000) and given two years of supervised release, including half a year of house arrest.
He was arrested on Harvard’s campus in 2020 and accused of lying about his involvement with the TTP, according to reports. His arrest drew backlash from many renowned scientists, including seven Nobel laureates and over two dozen Harvard professors. They all called his arrest “unjust.”
His new role in China comes as the nation seeks to surpass advanced industrial economies, including the US.
We take a look.
Lieber case raises alarms over China’s tech ambitions?
In 2011, Lieber was named the world’s top chemist of the preceding decade in a set of scientific rankings published by Thomson Reuters, the parent of Reuters news agency. Thomson Reuters, which in 2016 sold the business that compiled the rankings, declined to comment.
Some analysts say Lieber’s ability to reconstitute his laboratory after a federal criminal conviction for lying about his ties to China shows that US safeguards on technology with potential military uses haven’t kept pace with the Chinese government’s efforts to acquire it. That concern is amplified because of Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy, whereby civilian scientific resources and research are shared with the military.
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“China has weaponised against us our own openness and our own efforts for innovation,” said Glenn Gerstell, a nonresident senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and former general counsel of the US National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020. “They’ve flipped that and turned it around against us, and they’re taking advantage of it.”
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The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the defence ministry didn’t respond to questions about China’s development of brain-computer interfaces. SMART and i-BRAIN also didn’t respond to requests for comment on their research and on the recruitment of Lieber.
Primate Research
Lieber’s new perch appears to give him richer resources than he had in the United States.
An office building housing the Institute for Brain Research Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies (i-BRAIN), part of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART), at Weiguang Life Science Park in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, March 26, 2026. Reuters
In Shenzhen, i-BRAIN installed a deep-ultraviolet lithography system made by semiconductor-equipment giant ASML in February, according to the lab’s website.
The Dutch company’s machines print the tiny circuits essential to cutting-edge chips. At Harvard, Lieber used shared lithography equipment at the university’s Centre for Nanoscale Systems.
The centre serves more than 1,600 users annually, according to its website.
i-BRAIN’s model is two generations behind restricted machines, but is still likely to cost around $2 million (around Rs 18.96 crore), according to Jeff Koch of semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis.
ASML told Reuters it wouldn’t comment publicly about its customers.
On the same campus, Lieber also has access to the Brain Science Infrastructure (BSI) Shenzhen, a research lab with 2,000 primate cages and dedicated space for i-BRAIN’s work, according to i-BRAIN’s website.
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Many researchers in the field consider primate trials a prerequisite for human trials for invasive brain-computer interfaces. The BSI facility is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is funded by the Shenzhen government. None of them responded to questions about brain-computer interface technology and the role of primate research in its development.
Domestic and international researchers are being recruited by i-BRAIN for electrophysiology studies on rhesus monkeys as models for human brain-computer interfaces, according to a September 2025 post on its website, which invites prospective applicants to contact Lieber.
There is no indication that Lieber conducted primate research at Harvard. The elite Massachusetts university closed its New England Primate Research Centre in 2015 under sustained pressure over animal welfare and funding challenges.
Jung Min Lee, a researcher who co-authored nanofabrication papers with Lieber at Harvard, has joined him at i-BRAIN as a research associate professor, according to its website. Lee, who couldn’t be reached for comment, is an expert in stitching flexible electronics into brain tissue.
Harvard didn’t respond to Reuters questions about Lieber and Lee.
The entrance to the Institute for Brain Research Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies (i-BRAIN), which is part of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART), in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, March 26, 2026. Reuters
John Donoghue, a Brown University professor and neuroscientist who pioneered a brain-computer interface system known as BrainGate, said primate work is “absolutely critical” in translating neural interface technology to humans, but faces regulatory and funding hurdles in the United States.
“With so many hassles with non-human primate research here, to have somebody give you all this support, access to technology, a concentrated centre, a national initiative – those are things that are very attractive,” he told Reuters.
SMART’s 2026 budget, funded entirely by Shenzhen’s government, rose nearly 18 per cent to about $153 million (around Rs 1,449.83 crore). The academy’s budget papers don’t indicate the proportion of that funding dedicated to i-BRAIN.
SMART was established in 2023 under the founding president Nieng Yan, a structural biologist. Her return to China a year earlier after five years at Princeton University was hailed in domestic media as the homecoming of a “goddess scientist.” Yan and Princeton didn’t reply to Reuters questions about her role at Shenzhen and the recruitment of Lieber.
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Alongside SMART sits the legally separate but functionally twinned Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, which launched in 2019 with a five-year budget of around $2 billion (around Rs 16,800 crore) from Shenzhen’s government. Both are based in Guangming Science City, a national science hub of manicured parks and waterways.
The two institutions share the same leadership and offices and will also occupy a dedicated 750,000-square-meter site under construction at a planned cost of $1.25 billion (around Rs 118.65 crore). Shenzhen Bay Laboratory didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Signs guiding visitors to SMART’s premises are emblazoned with the slogan: “Innovate with the Party.” A Reuters reporter was denied access to i-BRAIN’s offices while trying to deliver a letter to Lieber.
Lieber joins at least six others who have moved to SMART from U.S. institutions, though all of them are Chinese-born researchers returning home.
China named brain-computer interface technology a national growth priority in its new five-year plan in March 2026. Zheng Shanjie, head of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said in October that the rise of brain-computer interfaces and related technologies “will be equivalent to creating another Chinese high-tech sector in the next 10 years.”
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The US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is also investing in brain-computer interfaces for drone and cyber defence applications, according to the agency’s program description. Research projects led by Lieber at Harvard received over $8 million (around Rs 758,094,800) in funding from the Defence Department since 2009, court documents show.
The Pentagon didn’t respond to questions about the technology’s military uses and Lieber’s role at Shenzhen.
Vying for the Nobel Prize
Lieber’s 2021 conviction was one of the few wins for the US Justice Department’s China Initiative, launched during the first Trump administration to counter Chinese economic espionage and intellectual-property theft.
The initiative was wound down under President Joe Biden after a record of failures and criticism for racial profiling.
While still on supervised release, Lieber obtained court approval for at least three trips to China in 2024, including one that US District Judge Denise Casper granted for “employment networking,” court documents show. Judge Casper didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Lieber’s defence team said in a pre-sentencing memorandum in 2023 that the scientist had been suffering from lymphoma and was largely confined to his home, leaving only for medical appointments, brief walks, and occasional visits to a local farm.
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During a 30-year career at Harvard, he spent over 80 hours a week in the lab, and when not working, Lieber spent time “coaching wrestling, and growing giant pumpkins in the back yard,” according to his defence.
Lieber acknowledged being “young and stupid” in getting involved with China’s Thousand Talents Program, the state-backed initiative to recruit overseas experts, his lawyer told the court in 2021. When he was arrested in 2020, Lieber told FBI agents he “wanted to win a Nobel Prize” and be recognised for his work, according to prosecutors.
The FBI declined to comment, and the Justice Department didn’t respond to questions.
The Lieber case illustrates a broader failure of US policy, some analysts say.
“If you think of him as a vector for tech acquisition that runs contrary to US interests, we identified that, punished him, and that did nothing to stop the big-picture trend,” said Emily de La Bruyère, co-founder of China-focused consultancy Horizon Advisory and a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a nonprofit research institute considered hawkish on foreign policy.
Gerstell, the former US official, described Lieber as “Exhibit A” in how US legal tools are inadequate.
“This is a guy who was convicted of precisely the thing that we want him to be convicted of in this context, and yet the minute he’s released from house arrest, he’s off in China,” he said.