Cybersecurity Professor Faced China-Funding Inquiry Before Disappearing, Sources Say

Jason Soret, one of the lawyers who represent Xiaofeng Wang and his wife, Nianli Ma, a library systems analyst that was also removed by Indiana University, tells that WIRED and MA “Amanan” and that neither of them was arrested. Their legal team is currently not aware of any criminal charges hanging against them, and while the couple’s lawyers saw a inspection note from the Ministry of Justice, Soret says they have not received a copy of the statement.

Wang is among the major researchers in the field of privacy, data security, biometric privacy, and sudden disappearance as a shock to many of his academic peers. Wang joined IU in 2004 and is the main main investigator of the center of the multidisciplinary for the distributed secret computing, which he created in 2022 with a grant of approximately $ 3 million from the National Science Corporation (NSF), according to a local article on the IU website. As part of his request to obtain NSF funding and other US federal research grants, Wang could have been required to disclose other grants already received or was currently hanging.

On March 28, the FBI searched two Wang -related home fees. On the same day, IU was said to have completed the function of Wang via an email sent by Provember Rahul Sharifastaf, which was wired and was reported for the first time by an Indiana daily student. The email also said it was understood that Wang had recently accepted a position at a university in Singapore, details that were also repeated in the statement attributed to Lee.

The statement says that Wang was planning to start at the University of Singaporean, whose name was not revealed on June 1, 2025 and asked for leave from Indiana University in early March. But IU replied by “placing it on an administrative leave, removing its main page IU, and disrupting its email address IU,” claiming.

View the new jobs for Wang “will be unrelated in any case because it exists [the] Next Academic Year and Welf Not Justify Firing Him, “Tanford Says. Tenord Profesor with Creat, and Requires a 10-Day Notice and A Hearing Before A Faculty Board of Review, if required by the Staff Member. If the administration is able to shoot an independent professor without the due legal procedures and is concerned with a policy accredited by our trustees, then there is no safe.

It was reached for the comment, and an IU spokesman refused to answer detailed questions from WIRED about previous contacts between the university and Wang and the school’s decision to launch it.

“The University of Indiana has recently been briefed on a federal investigation from an Endana faculty,” says the university spokesman Mark Body. “In the direction of the FBI, Indiana University will not provide any general comments regarding this investigation. According to Indiana University practices, Indiana University will not provide any general comments regarding the status of this person.”