Charles Lieber, the U.S.-trained scientist who was convicted in 2021 of concealing ties to Chinese funding while he was a professor at Harvard University, has reconstituted his laboratory in Shenzhen to continue work on brain-computer interfaces. At 67 years old, Lieber is now listed as a senior leader of i-BRAIN - the Institute for Brain Research, Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies - an entity embedded within the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation, or SMART.
The project focuses on embedding electronics into the human brain, a field that has drawn significant attention for medical applications such as treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring function to paralyzed patients. The same body of technology also figures in strategic discussions because of its possible defense applications. U.S. authorities have publicly noted that researchers linked to China’s armed forces have examined brain interfaces as potential means to enhance soldier performance.
Lieber was tried and found guilty by a jury in December 2021 on counts related to providing false statements to federal investigators about his involvement with a Chinese talent recruitment program and on tax offenses tied to payments from a Chinese university. His sentence included two days in prison, six months of house arrest, a $50,000 fine, and an order to pay $33,600 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service. During the legal proceedings, his defense indicated he was battling an incurable lymphoma that was in remission.
Three years after his sentencing, public information and institutional postings indicate Lieber now oversees i-BRAIN, a state-funded laboratory in Shenzhen that reports access to dedicated nanofabrication tools and primate research capacity that were not available to him at Harvard. SMART, the parent academy for i-BRAIN, lists Lieber as an investigator on an i-BRAIN webpage dated May 1, 2025. The same day, i-BRAIN posted an announcement naming him its founding director, a declaration that did not receive widespread coverage at the time.
At a Shenzhen government conference in December, Lieber described his arrival in China with a succinct personal statement: "I arrived on April 28, 2025 with a dream and not much more, maybe a couple bags of clothes. Personally, my own goals are to make Shenzhen a world leader." He declined requests for an interview through an assistant and did not answer written inquiries.
The facilities associated with i-BRAIN and its campus provide a different scale of ordered resources than those Lieber used at Harvard. i-BRAIN reported in February that a deep ultraviolet lithography system manufactured by ASML had been installed on the Shenzhen campus. These systems are used to print the very small circuit patterns on advanced semiconductor chips. At Harvard, Lieber relied on shared lithography tools housed in the university’s Center for Nanoscale Systems; the center serves a broad user base.
Industry commentary describing the installed ASML unit notes it is two generations behind systems that are subject to the tightest export restrictions, yet remains a sophisticated piece of equipment with a substantial price tag. One semiconductor analyst estimated such a tool would cost on the order of $2 million. ASML did not provide a response to questions about customers.
On the same research campus, i-BRAIN lists access to Brain Science Infrastructure Shenzhen, or BSI, a facility that the i-BRAIN website describes as having 2,000 primate cages and dedicated space for i-BRAIN research activities. The BSI is identified as part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is indicated as being funded by the Shenzhen government. Many researchers in neural interface fields consider non-human primate studies a necessary step before invasive brain-computer systems can progress to human clinical trials.
i-BRAIN has publicly advertised opportunities to recruit domestic and international researchers for electrophysiology work using rhesus monkeys as models for human neural interfaces, according to a posting on its website in September 2025 that invited prospective applicants to contact Lieber. There is no public indication he conducted primate research while at Harvard; the university shuttered its New England Primate Research Center in 2015 amid concerns over funding and animal welfare.
The Shenzhen research ecosystem in which i-BRAIN sits is composed of several state-backed institutions and funding streams. SMART, founded in 2023 with a founding president who returned to China after several years abroad, reported a 2026 budget that rose nearly 18 percent to about $153 million, funded entirely by the Shenzhen government. SMART’s budget documents do not specify the share allocated to i-BRAIN.
Co-located and closely coordinated with SMART is Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, a legally separate entity that launched in 2019 with a five-year funding commitment of roughly $2 billion. Both institutions operate within Guangming Science City, an extensive research hub featuring coordinated campuses, leadership, and planned facilities. They are set to occupy a 750,000-square-meter site currently under construction with a planned expenditure of $1.25 billion. Signage at SMART's premises carries the slogan: "Innovate with the Party." A representative attempting to deliver a letter to i-BRAIN was denied access to the institute's offices, according to publicly available accounts.
At least six researchers who previously worked at U.S. institutions have been reported to have moved to SMART, though the public record indicates those individuals were Chinese-born scientists returning to China.
Personnel movements to the Shenzhen institutions have included collaborators from Lieber’s time at Harvard. Jung Min Lee, a co-author on Lieber’s nanofabrication papers at Harvard, is listed on i-BRAIN's site as a research associate professor. Lee did not respond to inquiries. She is described on the site as an expert in integrating flexible electronics with brain tissue.
Colleagues in the neural interface community point to the logistical and regulatory barriers to primate research in the United States, which can make consolidated, well-funded centers attractive for scientists seeking to move technology toward clinical application. John Donoghue, a Brown University neuroscience professor known for pioneering work on the BrainGate interface, observed that primate experiments are "absolutely critical" for translating neural interface devices to human use, while also noting that U.S. regulatory and funding hurdles are substantial. He said a concentrated center with sustained support and national initiative can be a powerful draw for researchers.
The new lab’s capabilities and the institutional context have prompted concern among some analysts who view Lieber’s ability to reestablish a high-end research program abroad after a criminal conviction as evidence that U.S. safeguards for technologies with potential military applications have limitations. Those concerns are framed against a policy approach in China known as military-civil fusion, which promotes sharing of civilian scientific advances with defense entities. Critics argue that the interaction between civilian research centers and military institutions can complicate efforts to prevent sensitive technology from being used for national security purposes.
"China has weaponized against us our own openness and our own efforts for innovation," said Glenn Gerstell, a former general counsel of the U.S. National Security Agency and a nonresident senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They’ve flipped that and turned it around against us, and they’re taking advantage of it."
Government agencies and the institutions involved did not provide responses to questions about their work on brain-computer interface technologies or the specifics of primate research, according to available records. SMART and i-BRAIN did not reply to requests for comment about their research programs and recruitment practices. Officials in China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and the defense ministry did not respond to questions on the record.
Policy and funding signals from Beijing have elevated neural interface technologies as a strategic research priority. In March 2026, China named brain-computer interface technologies as a national growth priority in its new five-year plan. Zheng Shanjie, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, stated in October that the development of brain-computer interfaces and related fields "will be equivalent to creating another Chinese high-tech sector in the next 10 years."
In parallel, defense departments in other countries have pursued their own investments in neural interface research. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the United States has described investments in neural interface projects aimed at applications including drone control and cyber defense. Court documents indicate that research projects led by Lieber while at Harvard received in excess of $8 million in funding from the U.S. Defense Department since 2009. The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the technology's military uses or Lieber’s current role in Shenzhen.
Lieber’s legal case was one of the more prominent prosecutions handled under the U.S. Department of Justice’s China Initiative, a program created to counter economic espionage and potential theft of intellectual property. The China Initiative produced a mix of legal outcomes and controversies, and was eventually wound down during the Biden administration amid critiques of its effectiveness and concerns that it had led to wrongful targeting in some cases.
While under supervised release, Lieber obtained court permission for travel to China on several occasions in 2024. Court filings show that at least three trips were approved, including one specifically authorized by U.S. District Judge Denise Casper for the purpose described as "employment networking." Judge Casper did not provide comment for public records.
At sentencing, Lieber's defense submitted a memorandum stating that he had been living with lymphoma and was largely confined to home, leaving primarily for medical treatment, brief walks, and rare visits to a local farm. The memorandum also described Lieber’s long personal commitment to laboratory work during a 30-year academic career, noting weeks with more than 80 hours in the lab and personal activities such as coaching wrestling and growing giant pumpkins.
In court filings from his prosecution, Lieber acknowledged mistakes in his association with a Chinese state-backed recruitment program known as the Thousand Talents Program. His attorney told the court that Lieber had been "young and stupid" in joining the program. Prosecutors recorded a conversation from 2020 in which Lieber told federal investigators he "wanted to win a Nobel Prize" and sought recognition for his scientific contributions.
Some analysts frame Lieber’s return to China and his ability to access substantial equipment and animal research capacity as a broader signal about the limits of existing legal and policy tools to curb cross-border movement of people and know-how in advanced technologies. "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 a China-focused consultancy and a senior fellow at a Washington-based foundation.
Gerstell described Lieber as "Exhibit A" in terms of the difficulties the United States faces: "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."
The publicly available information about Lieber’s new role, the equipment reported on the campus, the primate research resources listed on institutional websites, and the sustained government funding that supports SMART and its affiliated laboratories underscore the scale of China’s domestic investments in neural interfaces. Those investments are aligned with a declared national push to accelerate capabilities in this area over the coming decade.
Where these developments will lead in scientific, clinical, commercial, and strategic terms remains a subject of debate among researchers, analysts, and policymakers. The specific details of ongoing experiments, any institutional collaborations with military entities, and the precise allocation of local government funding for individual projects are not specified in public budget documents and were not disclosed by the institutions when questions were posed.
As the laboratory that Lieber now leads moves forward, it will operate in a research environment shaped by both pronounced institutional backing and scrutiny from observers who see potential dual-use implications. The combination of specialized fabrication tools, primate facilities, and recruitment of researchers who have trained overseas illustrates a consolidated approach to developing invasive neural interface technologies at scale. How that approach will interact with the broader international scientific community and with national security considerations is likely to remain a topic of policy and ethical discussion.
Key factual elements reported in the public record include Lieber’s conviction and sentence in the United States; his subsequent appointment to leadership roles at i-BRAIN; the presence of advanced lithography equipment and large primate research infrastructure on the Shenzhen campus as described by institutional postings; the growth in SMART’s government-funded budget; and China’s designation of brain-computer interfaces as a strategic growth priority in its five-year plan.
Observers and former officials cited in public accounts emphasize the policy implications of these developments and the challenge they present to existing safeguards designed to prevent the transfer of technology with potential military relevance. At the same time, researchers noted practical incentives that drive scientists toward well-resourced centers when those centers provide concentrated capability, sustained funding, and fewer regulatory hurdles for certain types of preclinical work.
This reporting reflects information available through institutional announcements, court records, budget documents, public statements from officials and analysts, and postings on research center websites. Multiple institutions and government departments cited in those records did not provide responses to requests for comment on the record.