Prominent University of California, San Diego, eye doctor Kang Zhang resigned on July 4 after inewsource raised questions about his financial and political ties with China.
The publication uncovered that Zhang is a member of the Thousand Talents Program, a recruitment initiative that “incentivizes scientists to illegally take intellectual property developed at U.S. universities to China,” according to the FBI. inewsource also found that Zhang was involved in testing a controversial new surgical treatment for infants with cataracts in China, and that the doctor failed to disclose to UCSD and the federal government that he is a cofounder and primary shareholder of a Chinese biotechnology company.
Zhang founded UCSD’s Institute for Genomic Medicine in 2009 and served as the university medical center’s chief of eye genetics. He joined the Thousand Talents Program in 2010 and cofounded his company CalCyte Therapeutics in the same year. Zhang never mentioned the company in ...
