He has long been considered a star in the nanotechnology scene and a hot candidate for the Nobel Prize.

However, Harvard researcher Charles Lieber's chances of winning the prestigious award are likely to have dropped to zero since the end of last year.

Because he was found guilty shortly before Christmas by the Boston federal court after a lengthy hearing.

Not because of suspected research fraud.

Lieber's groundbreaking work on nanomaterials is still undisputed.

His close academic ties with America's greatest competitor, China, were his undoing.

How close they were, he concealed both the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health, from which Lieber had received ample funding. The accusation: The state authorities, his main employer, Harvard University, but above all the tax office, preferred to conceal the fact that he received large sums of Chinese third-party funds - the equivalent of around 1.5 million dollars - and other income from the Chinese government.

The 62-year-old researcher has evidently also kept quiet about the fact that he operated his own research laboratory at Wuhan University and that he was involved in the Chinese government's thousand talents program. The initiative with which China is trying to poach scientific talent and generate know-how in its own country has long been a thorn in the side of the US Department of Justice. They are used - so the fear - above all to steal intellectual property.

To counter this, the then Trump administration launched the controversial "China Initiative" in 2018. So far, 80 suspected cases are known. Chinese researchers are particularly affected by the allegation of espionage. Dear is the first prominent American scholar to be convicted. What punishment he has to fear is just as open as the question of how high the donations from China were and why Lieber kept quiet about his commitment for so long. Was it premeditation or stupidity? Do you want to make an example?

Many of Lieber's colleagues see the ruling as encroaching on the freedom of research and discriminating against Chinese visiting scholars.

There is a threat of a loss of confidence.

In any case, neither America nor Europe wanted to do without ambitious China as a partner, because for a long time they made their own research success dependent on it.

The turnaround has its price.