A Brilliant Mind

Imagine, a young man with a reputation as a skilled nanotechnologist, a brilliant engineer whose expertise and promise for the future has earned him one of the coveted Canada Research Chairs at a Canadian university; feted from Parliament Hill to the New York Times as an exemplar of academic, scientific excellence - what more might any young man envisage for himself?

With a record of super-charged work ethic, the reputation of an excellent academic supervisor with scores of young scientists working under him in university laboratories and brilliant theories to match expectations for his future, Daniel Kwok, still at University of Calgary, a man whom the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council now has been forced to place on a no-funding list faces a different future entirely.

Accused by the University of Alberta of plagiarism and of illicitly side-tracking research funding, he is in a place far removed from the promise his career trajectory pointed toward.
At his lab at University of Alberta he had 16 graduate students running his experiments, and he was busy publishing scientific papers far outdistancing his peers' output.

Federal records indicate that Daniel Kwok had been awarded in excess of $1.7-million by NSERC, the Canada Research Chairs program and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, in the last 12 years. The professor who oversaw Mr. (Dr.) Kwok's studies at University of Toronto where he obtained his Masters and PhD in engineering said "Daniel has a brilliant mind, and he is also a very straight arrow."

That straight arrow veered off its course. The University of Alberta began to investigate "financial misconduct" as well as "scientific misconduct" relating to "plagiarism", in 2005, and alerted NSERC. Mr. Kwok announced to the university that he was re-locating to University of Calgary, and the Edmonton engineering department searched frantically for a replacement teaching academic.

It would appear that the University of Alberta did nothing to alert the University of Calgary with respect to the problem that had arisen with Mr. Kwok. Problems that include the scientist allocating to himself for his own private use $150,000 in research-directed funding for such items as large-screen televisions, car parts, telephones, electronic gadgets and entertainment systems for his home.

Perhaps it is difficult for some people not to feel particularly entitled due to the prestige of their position, the pride of celebrity-status attention they appear to merit from colleagues, and the seeming security relating to the vast amounts of publicly-funded research dollars coming their way.

The researcher has returned in excess of $24,000 to the University of Alberta, and the university has turned that sum over to NSERC, and several other funding agencies. The case is far from closed; it will take the RCMP some considerable time to conclude their investigation for fraud.

Fellow researchers working in the field are outraged at the snail's pace of response to Daniel Kwok's malfeasance, which he steadfastly denies, claiming that matters have been misconstrued, that he is innocent of the charges brought against him. He has rendered, he insists, a full explanation of the situation to NSERC.

The really awful thing about all of this is that this man's actions will smear the reputation both of NSERC and the deserving scientists who make good use for Canada and for science of the funding allocated to them to further research and scientific investigation in their chosen fields of endeavour.

This man's actions are an anomaly and an abomination, and represent a miserable breach of trust.