{"id":154440,"date":"2026-02-07T00:17:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T00:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/154440\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T00:17:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T00:17:06","slug":"utep-president-responds-to-aerospace-nsf-investigation-clearing-utep-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/154440\/","title":{"rendered":"UTEP president responds to aerospace NSF investigation clearing UTEP professor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) &#8212; ABC-7 has received a response from UTEP after we reached out to the university following an <a href=\"https:\/\/kvia.com\/news\/top-stories\/2026\/02\/06\/investigation-clears-utep-professor-in-nsf-aerospace-grant-but-el-paso-loses-major-funding-opportunity\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NSF investigation clearing<\/a> UTEP professor Ahsan Choudhuri and the 2024 aerospace grant application.<\/p>\n<p>UTEP President Heather Wilson sent us this statement:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I stand by our May 2024 finding that a former UTEP faculty member said we have a test range, buildings, and equipment to make available for an NSF research project that the university did not have. The faculty member\u2019s statements were not true. \u00a0It\u2019s not clear which investigation the NSF is referring to in its letter, but we remain confident in our personnel decision and our decision to disclose the truth to the NSF. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This wasn\u2019t the only issue that caused the university to remove this former faculty member from his leadership position. \u00a0Dr. Natalicio reprimanded him and removed him from his tenure track position at the university for plagarism on an NSF proposal in 2006, audit findings of his center in April 2023 found non-compliant procurement card purchases and significant financial issues, and he also was found to have violated the university nepotism policy in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>He is no longer employed by UTEP.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION<\/p>\n<p>KVIA ABC 7 is committed to providing a forum for civil and constructive conversation.<\/p>\n<p>Please keep your comments respectful and relevant. You can review our Community Guidelines by <a href=\"https:\/\/kvia.com\/station\/2022\/07\/15\/community-guidelines\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">clicking here <\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you would like to share a story idea, please submit it <a href=\"https:\/\/kvia.com\/share\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) &#8212; ABC-7 has received a response from UTEP after we reached out to the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":{"0":"post-154440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-el-paso","9":"tag-el-paso-headlines","10":"tag-el-paso-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}