[P]rosecutors showed graduate students in [Yujie] Ding’s lab at Lehigh University did all of the work to develop an atmospheric sensor for NASA, while Ding and Zotova pocketed most of the $700,000 through a shell company to which the contract had been awarded.
Of the myriad thieving engineering professor stories UD has covered over the years, this one has it all: romance (Ding’s co-fraudster was his loving wife), slavery (what are graduate students for?), endless, fun, court machinations by the accused (“You have one of the best attorneys in the city,” [the judge] told Ding. “It appears you are attempting to delay this matter.”), and just, you know, even by the standards of thieving engineering professors, one of the most comprehensively sucky human beings that the human comedy, la condition humaine, the human animal, has to offer.
No one at Lehigh’s bothered to take his faculty page down. Could be they’re waiting until after sentencing. Ding “faces a statutory maximum of 120 years in prison,” and maybe Lehigh wants to add this impressively high number to his profile, but is waiting for it to be official.