A long-time engineering professor at Princeton University was fired for violating a policy prohibiting consensual relations with a student, according to the university.

Sergio Verdu

Sergio Verdu, who joined the faculty in 1984, was dismissed by the Board of Trustees on Sept. 24 for violating the university's policy prohibiting consensual relations with students and its policy requiring honesty and cooperation in university matters, Dan Day, a Princeton spokesman said in a statement Saturday.

"Before the recommendation was submitted to the board, it was reviewed by an independent, standing committee of the faculty at the request of Dr. Verdu, and that committee agreed with the finding that Dr. Verdu violated those policies and concluded that the recommended penalty was reasonable," the statement says.

The university's policy regarding consensual relations with students defines it as "a sexual or romantic relationship between a faculty member and a person for whom he or she has professional responsibility."

Verdu taught and conducted research in the Department of Electrical Engineering, was a member of the Information Sciences and Systems group and the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. He did research in Information Theory, according to a university webpage.

A call to Verdu's Princeton home was not answered Saturday and the voicemail was full.

In 2017 after a two-month university investigation, the award-winning professor was found responsible for sexually harassing a graduate student and given an eight-hour training session as punishment and other undisclosed penalties, sparking debate about whether the punishment was severe enough.

Yeohee Im, a graduate student from South Korea, filed a complaint with the university in April 2017 saying Verdu invited her to watch a sexually explicit movie at his house, served her wine and touched her upper thigh and stomach on two occasions.

Im told the HuffPost that she went public with her allegations against Verdu in part because she began hearing about other women with similar complaints about Verdu, but they were not willing to go on the record, according to a recording obtained by the HuffPost.

Despite the finding, Verdu denied those allegations to NJ Advance Media but declined to comment further saying "matters of this kind are to be kept confidential under university rules."

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