A US-based cybersecurity professor and his wife have reportedly disappeared after they were fired by their university employer and their homes were raided by federal authorities, amid reports of an investigation into potential professional misconduct.

Computer scientist XiaoFeng Wang, a tenured professor at Indiana University, and his wife Nianli Ma, a library analyst who was also employed by the university, have allegedly not been seen publicly since FBI and Homeland Security agents carried out searches at two properties belonging to the couple on Friday.

No arrests have been reported and the FBI has not provided any comment, other than acknowledging the searches took place.

Local media organisations reported witnessing federal agents removing unknown items from the couple's homes.

Indiana University, which reportedly received a misconduct allegation against Wang in February, has wiped both Wang and Ma’s profiles from its website and has not made any public comment about their disappearance beyond acknowledging the federal investigation.

A storied career in tech

Wang has worked in computer engineering for decades and earned a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in the US city of Pittsburgh in 2004 before joining Indiana University’s Bloomington campus that same year.

Earlier in his career he briefly worked at Chinese company Shanghai Venus Software and in the Shanghai office of US company Hewlett-Packard, according to an archived copy of his CV which has been deleted from the Indiana University website.

Wang earned a bachelor of engineering at China’s Nanjing University in 1993 and a masters of engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1994.

His university research has covered everything from security analysis to biomedical data privacy and privacy risks in artificial intelligence models.

Wang has previously overseen more than $32 million ($US20 million) worth of research projects, some of which were supported by organisations and companies including Samsung, Microsoft, the US Army Research Office, and the US National Science Foundation.

He also gave a keynote speech at the 14th International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS) in Melbourne in 2020, according to his CV.

Wang was inducted into the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellows program in 2024 alongside Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web.


XiaoFeng Wang worked in Indiana University Bloomington's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. Photo: Indiana University Bloomington / Facebook

‘I’ve been terminated’

Wang was fired with immediate effect on 28 March, according to a letter from Indiana University shared by Indiana Public Media.

The letter stated Wang had accepted a new appointment with a university in Singapore, but the reason for his sudden firing and details of his supposed new role remained unclear.

Indiana University reportedly received a misconduct allegation against Wang in mid-February, according to Indiana Public Media.

The researcher had reportedly been accused of failing to disclose co-authors and mislabelling who was the principal investigator for a research grant.

Indiana University has not confirmed details of the alleged investigation.

Alex Tanford, a law professor at Indiana University, reportedly told CNBC that Wang had contacted him in March while the university was investigating the grant application in question.

Tanford said Wang emailed him on Friday to say, “I’ve been terminated.”

‘Silence fuels suspicion and distrust’, professors say

The local Bloomington chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has asked Indiana University to rehire Wang, citing a university policy which states tenured professors cannot be fired immediately without cause.

As a tenured professor, Wang could only be fired with a minimum of 10 days’ notice if he was found to be responsible for “serious personal misconduct”, according to university policy.

In a letter to Indiana University, the chapter’s executive committee said the existence of an investigation or allegations against Wang “cannot justify failure to comply with university policies”, and called for the instituation to publicly share more information.

“Silence fuels suspicion and distrust and makes shared governance harder,” the committee said.

“… It is fundamental that individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

UPDATE 03/04/25: Wired, which reported Indiana University had been examining whether Wang had received unreported research funding from China, said it received a statement from a lawyer representing Wang and Ma.

“Prof. Wang and Ms. Ma are thankful for the outpouring of support they have received from colleagues at Indiana University and their peers across the academic community," the statement said.

"They look forward to clearing their names and resuming their successful careers at the conclusion of this investigation."