The estate of a Northwestern University professor, who died by suicide last year after being investigated in a controversial federal probe, is suing the school for allegedly discriminating against her and evicting her from her lab — blaming the university, in part, for her death.

Jane Wu was a tenured faculty member in neurology, molecular biology and genetics at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine for nearly two decades. She was among hundreds of Chinese American scientists targeted by the Justice Department’s China Initiative, a Trump-era program seeking to counter theft of American intellectual property and research.

Though Wu was never charged, Northwestern reassigned her grant funding, closed her lab and forcibly admitted her to the university’s psychiatric hospital, according to a civil complaint filed June 23 in Cook County Circuit Court. The executor of Wu’s estate is her daughter.

The university’s actions were a “substantial and decisive factor in her decision to end her life,” the complaint stated.

“Anyone who reads the facts of this complaint will recognize that a great injustice was done to Jane Wu,” attorney Thomas Geoghegan said.

A spokesperson for Northwestern said the university does not comment on pending litigation.

The China Initiative was scrapped in 2022 under the Biden administration. Though more than 200 Chinese American researchers were investigated, researchers say only a few dozen were charged and subsequently convicted. Critics said the program fueled a narrative of bias and created a chilling effect among the academic community.

After Wu was identified in the probe, she was placed under an administrative investigation by the National Institutes of Health. Though she was a longtime professor, her grants were reassigned to her white male colleagues and her research team was dissolved, according to the filing.

“NU did nothing to support her nor help lift the racial stigma placed over Dr. Wu despite her obvious innocence and the enormous funding her work had brought to NU,” the complaint said.

Even when the NIH’s investigation concluded in December 2023, Wu’s grants were not returned to her, according to the lawsuit. Her lab was completely shut down by May 2024, preventing her from applying for new NIH funding. Because Wu’s research was listed as inactive, Northwestern reduced her salary.

Feeling increasingly isolated, Wu began to spiral into a deep depression and show signs of obsessive behavior, the filing said.

“NU destroyed not only Dr. Wu’s chances at NIH funding but also her research career,” the complaint said.

That same month, university and Chicago police removed Wu from her office in handcuffs. She was then admitted against her will to the psychiatric unit of Northwestern Memorial Hospital “as a means to end her active research and employment,” according to the lawsuit.

Wu died by suicide weeks later, on July 10, 2024, “with her career, her professional reputation, and her sense of personal safety shattered.” She was 60 years old.

The complaint did not specify what damages the estate seeks.

The filing said Wu became a naturalized citizen in 2000, and had spent nearly 40 years in the United States. She had won continuous NIH funding since 1996. Her work investigated the molecular biology of mRNA and neurodegeneration, seeking to fight diseases such as Alzheimer’s and ALS.

Margaret Flanagan, now an associate professor at University of Texas Health San Antonio, worked beside Wu for more than three years at the Feinberg School of Medicine. But she was more than a colleague, Flanagan said — she was a mentor and friend, with a deep passion for science and unwavering generosity.

“Her legacy is one of strength, compassion, and a relentless commitment to advancing science,” Flanagan wrote in a statement to the Tribune.

Wu was intense and thoughtful, Flanagan said, and her astute advice has stuck with her colleague years later. She often reminded Flanagan to “focus on (her) science.” Wu always centered her work around a larger mission of advancing knowledge and helping patients, Flanagan said.

The pair largely fell out of touch when Flanagan left Northwestern in 2023.

“I assumed there would be time in the future to reconnect, not knowing how short that time would be,” Flanagan wrote.

Andrea Chu, the Midwest organizing director for Asian American Advancing Justice Chicago, said that Wu’s death shows the “devastating” impact of the China Initiative. She pointed to the lack of cases brought by the Justice Department as an indication that the program was racially biased.

A 2021 investigation from the MIT Technology Review found that 148 individuals were charged, but just 40 of them had pleaded or been found guilty. Only 19 cases included violations of the Economic Espionage Act, the intended focus of the initiative.

“The toll that it took on the scientists themselves, their colleagues and also their families is innumerable,” Chu said. “This was a great source of fear.” Originally Published: July 4, 2025 at 4:00 PM CDT

YOLO

It’s a joke, I know it’s a joke, I’ll give you your upvote.

They were probably invited to the Signal chat and knew the war plans.

It’s always a good idea to look toward nature for ready made solutions

This is what I’ve been saying for the longest. If you rely on the US then you get what you deserve. Build your own shit. People kept mistaking what I was saying as being some arrogant American. No, I was warning you not to rely on anyone but yourselves. Build your own tech companies, defense systems, etc. Even if we elect someone sane in the next election we will still have the MAGA element here so don’t trust the US.

Gotta provide details. Don’t leave us hanging.

Yeah I use software to make my life easier. Not saying it isn’t worth learning but time is limited.

I’ll check this one out. I don’t see any documentation on it so I don’t know if they can sync with my banks.

Downloading this

No Firefly doesn’t do it. I can’t track individual securities or assets only total values of an account. I wouldn’t know about any gains or losses nor total shares owned.

So that actually doesn’t do what I want. It will record buying and selling of securities but only as if it were like making purchases or payments in a credit card or bank account. It doesn’t keep track of the value of the security or any other asset. For example, I have a Roth account and it has a couple hundred shares of an index fund in it. Actual will only show that I spent several thousand on that index fund (listing it’s name in the notes) but not the number of shares I bought and at what price at the time of purchase. I won’t be able to track gains or losses for each security, only as a whole of the entire Roth. Actual doesn’t do what I want it to do and I don’t know enough TypeScript to contribute.

They can’t think like that. Trump has to be hated so he can only do bad things.

Democrats: My way or the highway! Fall in line and support what we tell you to. This is how you’re supposed to feel about these issues.

Trump: Lets make a deal. You vote for me and I’ll do XYZ for you.

Found the story. I’m not saying that it happens to young kids but it does happen. You also didn’t have anything about kids in the quote so I just assumed you meant anyone.

I just read a case where this group of young college kids (18+) lured this army guy (around 22 I think) to their campus using a dating app. They mobbed him, chase him to his car calling him a pedo, and tried to kidnap him. He called the cops and I think 6 of them were arrested. They went to this catholic college and I’ll try to find the story later. This students claimed they were doing the “To catch a…” trend so it does happen.

Oh this looks promising.

Well I can get the logs in Seq. I don’t know how to process the logs that come in so they are at the right level, timestamp, message, etc. Guess I look into it tomorrow…

Yeah but the thing is I have it set up to read the logs being sent out from my Docker containers. Even though I’ve set the containers to output using the GELF driver they don’t really do that. The log messages my container send are not in GELF format so I have to find a way to fix that.

I’m not clear in the post I guess so I’ll try to be more clear here.

• I’m using Seq for my centralized logging.
• The logs I get from most of my containers are not in GELF format. I cannot change that unless I change how logging works in all the programs I use. So I’ll need to edit every source code and compile or ask each project to update their logging and output to GELF.
• They are all shown as errors or info. It depends on the container because some send their logging info to stderr and some to stdout.
• I’m looking for something that can intercept those logs from my other containers, format them to GELF, and send the formatted logs to Seq.