SEATTLE — The University of Washington has agreed to pay more than $800,000 to settle Justice Department allegations that a professor submitted false documentation relating to a highly competitive grant.
The grant documents were submitted to the National Science Foundation by Mehmet Sarikaya, a professor in the university’s Materials Science and Engineering Department, according to NSF records and the settlement agreement, which was made public by the Seattle U.S. Attorney’s Office on Tuesday.
The documents misrepresented the involvement of two researchers who in reality were not involved in the work, the university said in an emailed statement.
That could have made the grant application more attractive. The university was awarded about $1.4 million for the work, which concerned how biology interacts with man-made solids at the molecular level, according to NSF records.
