Jason Covert, one in every of attorneys representing Xiaofeng Wang and his spouse, Nianli Ma, a library techniques analyst whose worker profile was additionally eliminated by Indiana College, tells WIRED that Wang and Ma are each “secure” and that neither of them have been arrested. Their authorized workforce just isn’t presently conscious of any pending prison prices towards them, and whereas the couple’s attorneys have seen a search warrant from the Division of Justice, Covert says they haven’t acquired a replica of the affidavit establishing possible trigger.
Wang is taken into account among the many high researchers within the area of privateness, knowledge safety, and biometric privateness, and his sudden disappearance got here as a shock to lots of his educational friends. Wang joined IU in 2004 and is the lead principal investigator of the multidisciplinary Middle for Distributed Confidential Computing, which he established in 2022 with an nearly $3 million grant from the Nationwide Science Basis (NSF), in line with a since-deleted bio on IU’s web site. As a part of his software for the NSF funding and different US federal analysis grants, Wang would have been required to disclose different grants he already acquired or had been presently pending assessment.
On March 28, the FBI searched two dwelling addresses related to Wang. The identical day, IU additionally reportedly terminated Wang’s job through an electronic mail despatched by provost Rahul Shrivastav, which WIRED obtained and was first reported by The Indiana Daily Student. The e-mail additionally stated it was understood that Wang had lately accepted a place with a college in Singapore, a element additionally repeated within the assertion attributed to Li.
The assertion says Wang deliberate to start out on the unnamed Singaporean college on June 1, 2025 and requested a go away of absence from Indiana College in early March. However IU responded by “placing him on administrative go away, eradicating his IU homepage, and disabling his IU electronic mail handle,” it claims.
Wang’s new job provide “can be irrelevant in any occasion as a result of it’s for [the] subsequent educational 12 months and wouldn’t justify firing him,” Tanford says. Terminating his employment through an electronic mail was a violation of university policy, Tanford claims, which prohibits firing a tenured professor with out trigger, and requires a 10-day discover and a listening to earlier than a college board of assessment, if requested by the employees member. “The school is deeply involved. If the administration can fireplace a tenured professor with out due course of and in violation of a coverage authorized by our trustees, none of us is secure,” he says.
Reached for remark, an IU spokesperson declined to reply detailed questions from WIRED about prior communications between the college and Wang and the varsity’s determination to fireside him.
“Indiana College was lately made conscious of a federal investigation of an Indiana College school member,” college spokesperson Mark Bode tells WIRED in an emailed assertion. “On the course of the FBI, Indiana College won’t make any public feedback relating to this investigation. In accordance with Indiana College practices, Indiana College may even not make any public feedback relating to the standing of this particular person.”