A tenured biology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was fired Friday, a rare punishment that essentially means a career death sentence in higher education and that has happened only once before at the state’s flagship public university.

Fei Wang, an associate professor of cell and molecular biology, was terminated following a special meeting of university trustees Friday, concluding a yearslong review of his work. Board members determined that Wang had fabricated and falsified scientific data in grant applications to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

It was not known when Wang’s alleged misconduct occurred or what type of grants were involved, but school officials said the falsification involved passing off mouse cells as human cells and submitting results from experiments that were never performed.

He has sued the university in Chicago federal court, saying that officials did not fully investigate the claims. The lawsuit was filed before Friday’s meeting and sought to prevent the university from firing him. Wang declined to comment when reached by phone and referred questions to his lawyer, Stuart Polizzi, who said the suit would continue.

“Our claim is they did not follow their own process for investigating this,” Polizzi said. “When they’re not following their own policies, it limits the information that gets into the record for the sake of defending yourself.”

Links to Wang’s faculty profile were inactive Friday. His LinkedIn page states that he joined the U. of I. faculty in November 2005. He was granted tenure in 2012, U. of I. spokeswoman Robin Kaler said. He was in the department of cell and developmental biology.

His firing is effective immediately.

“Prof. Wang is without question a highly intelligent, likable, and charismatic scientist,” trustees wrote in its report, released Friday. “However, the record supporting his fabrication of data and falsification of laboratory results, his submission of mouse cells rather than human cells in his data, his failure to mentor and supervise his students is overwhelming and beyond unacceptable. Prof. Wang’s misconduct has already required the university to return substantial sums of research funds to the federal government.”

Kaler said the university returned $355,000 to several agencies that funded his research.

The beginnings of the case date to January 2014, university officials said. Following up on an emailed tip, Professor Jia Chen, who heads Wang’s department, learned of reports that Wang’s application for a grant to the National Institutes of Health presented images of mouse cells and misrepresented as human cells and referred to nonexistent experiments.   

Professors and administrators investigated over the next several months. A panel comprised of faculty in the school of molecular and cellular biology issued its final report in March 2015, recommending Wang’s dismissal.

“Dr. Wang cannot be trusted with conducting academic research and mentoring graduate students and postdoctoral fellows,” those faculty officials said at the time. “From an academic and research standpoint, the panel strongly and unanimously recommends termination of Dr. Wang’s employment and all association with the UIUC.”

In December 2015, the university chancellor at the time, Barbara Wilson, filed charges against Wang with the tenure committee. The committee held four hearings in late 2016 and early 2017 to consider the allegations, and issued a final report in April supporting his dismissal.

In addition to the original allegations, the committee concluded that Wang had also falsified data in an earlier grant application to the National Science Foundation and had failed to properly mentor the seven doctoral candidates under his supervision at the time.

“Professor Wang knew what he was doing when he did it,” committee members wrote. “It is instructive that the misrepresentations were not random. For the most part, they tended to claim more work than had actually been done and with more success than was warranted.”

Wang then requested a hearing before trustees, which occurred last month. Board members agreed that Wang had been “grossly neglectful” and supported his immediate dismissal. Among the most compelling evidence, trustees said, is that Wang admitted to all the allegations when confronted by Chen, his department head.

“According to Prof. Chen, she asked him ‘Did you make this up completely?’ and Prof. Wang answered ‘Yes,’ ” trustees wrote.

Kaler said Wang had not been teaching since the investigation began but had continued to be paid while the process unfolded. Wang’s pay in the 2017-18 academic year was $87,617.

It has been five years since U. of I. last ousted a tenured faculty member. An engineering professor, Louis Wozniak, who had taught at U. of I. for nearly five decades, had a long history of clashing with the administration before he was dismissed in November 2013 for misconduct.

His misdeeds, officials said at the time, included videotaping students without their consent, sending students an email with sexual overtones and refusing to remove private information about students from his website.

Wozniak’s firing is believed to have been the first time the university board took up a tenure review case.

“These are very rare cases and the board considers these matters as among the most serious tasks it faces,” a university spokesman, Tom Hardy, said.

From 2013: University of Illinois fires controversial engineering professor »

Tenure is an indefinite appointment that essentially provides a professor a lifetime post. It is prized among academics because allows a faculty member to teach, research, speak and write freely without fear of interference from university leadership. It is seen as being critical to protect academic freedom.

Owing to the status it confers, the process of rescinding tenure is an exhaustive one and can take years. Wozniak had been suspended from teaching for more than three years by the time he was fired.

The president consults with the university’s faculty advisory committee then submits a written statement supporting a professor’s firing to the university senate. A statement of the accusations then must be mailed to the professor, at which point the faculty member may request a hearing before the senate’s committee on academic freedom and tenure.