An ISU graduate student may spend up to 25 years in jail if he is convicted of trying to kill his wife, an ISU professor, in the Black Engineering building.

Department of Public Safety officials charged Ziyi Dai, graduate student in business administration, Monday with attempted murder and solicitation to commit murder.

The charges were added Monday to previous charges of willful injury and going armed with intent.

He pleaded not guilty to those charges in Story County District Court on Jan. 11.

Dai was arrested in December after his wife, Li Cao, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, appeared at Mary Greeley Medical Center with knife wounds to her fingers, hands and arm, DPS officials said.

“She went to the hospital in a private vehicle,” said DPS Director Jerry Stewart.

The preliminary DPS investigation revealed Dai may have attacked his wife with a knife in the Black Engineering building on campus early in the evening of Dec. 26.

The knife that investigators believe was used by Dai in the crime was later found in a vehicle.

“This investigation has been ongoing ever since Dec. 26,” Stewart said.

Stewart said officers obtained information to charge Dai with attempted murder from Dai’s fellow inmates.

Recently-filed court documents indicated Dai has told other inmates he had intended to murder his wife.

Police said Dai may have offered to pay one inmate to kill his wife when that inmate was released from prison.

The inmate declined but was provided with handwritten directions to Cao’s home.

“If convicted of the most serious felony – attempted murder – Dai could be imprisoned for no more than 25 years,” Stewart said.

Stewart said attempted murders are not a common occurrence on the ISU campus.

“I am not aware of any attempted murders in the last 12 years,” he said.