Event

As Interim Chair of Temple University’s Physics Department, I was busy on May 20, 2015 with my class, research, promotion of colleagues, and a university task force I was chairing. I gave a dinner-time lecture for Pint of Science, a science festival, at an Irish pub before picking up my wife at the airport, who was returning from an overseas trip. My elder daughter was home from college for a few days. We made a plan to visit a famous Korean fried chicken restaurant. All this was suddenly and forever changed a few hours later when I was woken up by the urgent pounding on my door. I was arrested by armed FBI agents and indicted by the U.S. government for sharing protected U.S. company technology with China. The indictment was dismissed in September after it became clear that I did nothing of the kind. My case raises serious concerns about the government’s fight against economic espionage and sounds the alarm concerning openness in academia and international collaborations in science and technology.