MIT faculty defend professor against trumped-up charges related to China ties In a letter to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President L. Rafael Reif, a draft of which was posted to Twitter, 100 MIT faculty members issued a resounding defense of their colleague, Professor Gang Chen, who was indicted last week on charges of wire fraud and tax violations and failing to disclose financial ties to China. The Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office issued a press release January 20 reporting that Chen, the director of the MIT Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering Laboratory and director of the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC), was charged in a criminal complaint and arrested on January 14.