Four researchers were forced to resign from their positions at the University of Florida after a federal investigation revealed that foreign countries including China had exploited medical research at the university with the researchers’ help.

According to a report by the Tampa Bay Times, the University of Florida was the target of foreign manipulation. Federal investigators concluded that professors employed by universities around the United States that receive public funding are funneling research data to other countries, including communist China.

The four researchers left the university after the National Institutes of Health penned a letter that suggested that some researchers were exploiting the university’s research and sharing it with other countries.

After the National Institutes of Health sent a letter to the University of Florida suggesting that certain members of the faculty and staff were stealing research, the university conducted its own internal investigation. Three researchers resigned and another was fired.

Three of the researchers resigned and one was terminated after the university received a letter from the National Institutes of Health regarding questionable foreign meddling in grant research and funding. The terminated employee worked part time for the university’s College of Medicine. Two were from the College of Engineering and one was from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

University of Florida President W. Kent Fuchs told Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) in December that the university had identified several professors that were exploiting their position to feed research information to foreign countries.

“The university has identified certain faculty members who were participating or were seeking to participate in a foreign talents program. The university has addressed or is in the process of addressing each of these matters,” Fuchs wrote.

Breitbart News has written extensively on the Confuscious Institute, an organization funded, in part, by the Chinese government, which has had moderate success in controlling discourse on China on American college campuses. Breitbart News reported in October that the University of Delaware had announced that they were severing ties with the Confucius Institute

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