A judge accepted former ISU researcher Dong-Pyou Han’s plea agreement Feb. 25.

Han was a researcher, who admitted to falsifying lab results in an HIV vaccine study, plead guilty to two counts of making false statements in reports. 

Han had been studying the affects of a vaccine on HIV-infected rabbit blood when he spiked the samples with un-infected blood to make it seem like the vaccine was working. Han then presented his findings to other scientists, who raised concerns when they were unable to duplicate his results.

After admitting he’d faked results of experiments with an AIDS vaccine in 2013, Korean-born Han was forced to resign his position as a research assistant professor. 

The multi-million dollar federal grant Iowa State University was given for the vaccine research was also taken away.  

Han faces up to 10 years in prison and could have to pay back some of the more than $12 million of federal grant money used in the research.