PASADENA >> A physics professor at the California Institute of Technology filed a lawsuit against the university Thursday, alleging it allowed a potential Israeli spy on campus for two years even after she reported that he violated federal laws and shared classified information with his home country and on the Internet.

Sandra Troian alleges Caltech administrators ignored the school’s whistleblower policy and retaliated against her for the past four years because if they had documented her concern, they could have put an $8 billion contract with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at risk and put the school in a bad light. Troian said she is frightened for her career.

“I’m shocked at what happened because I know that I did the right thing, and I absolutely refuse to break the law,” Troian said. “I’ve done the right thing all my life. I thought Caltech would appreciate knowing about certain problems and security leaks. … Caltech is filled with very many good scientists and very honorable people. I think the group that decided to come after me — they themselves are very unethical.”

The lawsuit claims Caltech’s campaign against her started in the summer of 2010 and revved up soon after June 2012 when FBI agents interviewed Troian about security breaches at JPL. The federal agents said her former assistant was the subject of International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) violations and possibly espionage acts from his time at JPL and Caltech, according to the complaint.

In a statement issued late Thursday, Caltech called Troian’s lawsuit meritless and said the institution always abides by export control laws and ITAR. It also regularly cooperates with government agencies such as the FBI, the statement said.

“The plaintiff, who was dissatisfied with the outcome of a recent internal campus investigation into her decision to list her cat as the author of a published abstract and omit recognitio of a postdoctoral scholar who performed related research, suffered no retaliation and remains an active faculty member of the institution,” the Caltech statement said.

In her complaint, Troian said she used her cat’s name as a placeholder because she hoped to find a co-author before she had to present a 10-minute talk. She said using pets’ names was a regular jest among the scientific community and listed a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who had his hamster co-author a scientific paper in 2001.

Caltech officials, the suit alleges, threatened to terminate the tenured professor, denied her about $1.1 million in research funding, accused her of plagiarism and research falsification, accused her of mistreating former postdoctoral research scholars, and added fictitious negative reports in her personnel file, among other things.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior court, demands a jury trial because Caltech retaliated against Troian, performed a breach of contract and violated an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

Pasadena-based attorney Dan Stormer said national security concerns are at stake. He wants Caltech to remove “false and slanderous defamatory comments” from Troian’s professional record. Additionally, he seeks punitive damages because “they’ve got to be held publicly accountable for their conduct.”

Plaintiffs in similar cases have been awarded multibillion-dollar verdicts, he said.

“JPL is the cornerstone of Caltech’s financial security,” Stormer said. “It makes them one of the foremost research institutions in the world. Without it, Caltech is just a backwater institution with very bright people. They could not get the people here that they have without the access to the research facilities at JPL. It is what makes Caltech Caltech.”

Edward Stolper, Caltech’s provost, allegedly told Troian that if she did not cooperate with him, he would help make her “miserable,” the suit says.

“God, if you think you’ve had a bad two years, wait for the next two years of being confrontational with Caltech. It just won’t be fun,” he allegedly said according to the suit.

The former Caltech research scholar who is the catalyst for the lawsuit is identified as Amir Gat. He is in Israel and employed as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at ITT, an Israeli government institution, according to the complaint.

Troian alleges a virus attack in May 2010 caused hundreds of project files on her computer to be uploaded to an unknown IP address outside of Caltech. She later discovered the virus originated from Gat’s laptop and repeatedly notified Caltech officials about her findings, according to the lawsuit.

Gat admitted he shared details of a top-secret new space micropropulsion system with his doctorate advisor, Daniel Weihs, at ITT without first getting permission from the U.S. government. Weihs is a member of Israel’s National Steering Committee for Space Infrastructure of the Ministry of Science, chair of Israel’s National Committee for Space Research and chief scientist at the Ministry of Science and Technology, according to the suit.

Also without proper approval from the U.S. Department of State, Gat allegedly made 65 online postings about key operating principles for the micropropulsion device, according to the lawsuit.

In another breach of federal privacy procedure, Caltech is accused of knowingly imaging Troian’s entire laptop even after she protested that it “contained personal medical records, Department of Defense materials that federal law prohibited from further distribution and materials pertaining to Dr. Troian’s conversations with the FBI,” the suit says.

Stormer said Troian has never tried to hide anything, yet Caltech has done its best to hide everything.

“This is simply an affront to concepts of fairness,” Stormer said. “She committed her life to science and to Caltech. She is the person who recognized Caltech’s obligations under the espionage laws, and she is egregiously punished for her honesty when questioned by the FBI.”

Troian, who has been employed at Caltech for eight years, is the only female faculty member in applied physics and is one of four female physicist faculty members on campus, according to the suit.

Women make up nearly 19 percent of professorial faculty at Caltech.

As a faculty member, Troian said her career depends on her reputation and integrity, which she said Caltech has sought to impugn.

“This has been very humiliating and degrading to me. I’ve been subject to the most invasive interrogation you can imagine,” she said. “JPL acted honorably throughout. They did the right thing and filed the right report. That part of the system worked well. …My complaint is strictly with Caltech.”