By David Kirton
SHENZHEN, April 30 (Reuters) - An American scientist convicted of lying to U.S. authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain.
Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as ALS and restoring
movement in paralyzed patients. But it also has potential military applications: Scientists at China’s People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting mental agility and situational awareness, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
Lieber was found guilty by a jury and convicted in December 2021 of making false statements to federal investigators about his ties to a Chinese state program to recruit overseas talent, and tax offenses related to payments he received from a Chinese university. He served two days in prison and six months under house arrest, and was fined $50,000 and ordered to pay $33,600 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service. During the case, his defense said he was suffering from an incurable lymphoma, which was in remission, and he was fighting for his life.
Three years after he was sentenced, Reuters has learned that Lieber is now overseeing China’s state-funded i-BRAIN, or the Institute for Brain Research, Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies, with access to dedicated nanofabrication equipment and primate research infrastructure unavailable to him at Harvard. The lab is an arm of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation, or SMART.
“I arrived on April 28, 2025 with a dream and not much more, maybe a couple bags of clothes,” Lieber said of his move to China at a Shenzhen government conference in December. “Personally, my own goals are to make Shenzhen a world leader.”
Lieber, through an assistant, declined an interview request, citing “current commitments.” He didn’t respond to written questions from Reuters.
SMART last year appointed Lieber as an investigator, according to a post on i-BRAIN’s website dated May 1, 2025. That news was covered by some media outlets. The same day, i-BRAIN said Lieber had also been appointed its founding director – an announcement that went unreported at the time.
This story is the most comprehensive account of Lieber’s activities since he moved to China. Reuters is reporting for the first time that his lab has access to dedicated primate research facilities and chip-making equipment; that it sits within a sprawling ecosystem of state-backed institutions bankrolled by billions of dollars in government funding; and that it is housed within an institution that is luring top scientific talent back from the United States.
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 how U.S. safeguards on technology with potential military uses haven’t kept pace with Chinese government 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.
“China has weaponized against us our own openness and our own efforts for innovation,” said Glenn Gerstell, a nonresident senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former general counsel of the U.S. National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020. “They’ve flipped that and turned it around against us, and they’re taking advantage of it.”
The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the defense ministry didn’t respond to questions about China’s development of brain-computer interfaces. SMART and i-BRAIN also didn’t reply to requests for comment about their research and the recruitment of Lieber.
PRIMATE RESEARCH
Lieber’s new perch appears to give him richer resources than he had in the United States.
In Shenzhen, i-BRAIN in February installed a deep ultraviolet lithography system made by semiconductor-equipment giant ASML, 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 Center for Nanoscale Systems. The center serves more than 1,600 users annually, according to its website.
i-BRAIN’s model is two generations behind restricted machines, but still likely to cost around $2 million, 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 Brain Science Infrastructure (BSI) Shenzhen, a research lab with 2,000 primate cages and dedicated space for i-BRAIN’s work, according to the latter’s website. 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 Center 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 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.
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 center, 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% to about $153 million. The academy’s budget papers don’t indicate the proportion of that funding dedicated to i-BRAIN.
SMART was established in 2023 under 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.
Alongside SMART sits the legally separate but functionally twinned Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, which launched in 2019 with a five-year budget from Shenzhen’s government of around $2 billion. 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 that is under construction at a planned cost of $1.25 billion. 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.”
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is also investing in brain-computer interfaces for drone and cyber defense applications, according to the agency’s program description. Research projects led by Lieber at Harvard received over $8 million in funding from the Defense 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 A NOBEL PRIZE
Lieber’s 2021 conviction was one of few wins for the U.S. 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 U.S. District Judge Denise Casper granted for “employment networking,” court documents show. Judge Casper didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Lieber’s defense 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. 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 defense.
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 recognized 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 U.S. policy, some analysts say.
“If you think of him as a vector for tech acquisition that runs contrary to U.S. 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 Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit research institute considered hawkish on foreign policy.
Gerstell, the former U.S. official, described Lieber as “Exhibit A” in how U.S. 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.
(Reporting by David Kirton in Shenzhen. Editing by David Crawshaw.)
