Kansas University has fired a researcher who admitted lying to the federal government in a criminal investigation.

KU notified Hiroaki Serizawa, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, during the spring semester that his contract would not be renewed at the end of the fiscal year.

“He’s off the payroll at the end of June,” said Dennis McCulloch, a spokesman at the KU Medical Center.

A U.S. district judge in Cleveland last week sentenced Serizawa to three years probation, fined him $500 and ordered him to perform 150 hours of community service after pleading guilty to making false statements. In exchange, charges against him tied to economic espionage were dismissed.

According to court proceedings and documents, Serizawa in the summer of 1999 stored samples of biological research materials for Takashi Okamoto, then a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic. Serizawa and Okamoto, both natives of Japan, worked together on the East Coast before Serizawa came to KU in 1996.

Okamoto is accused of stealing the materials, which were involved in Alzheimer’s research, in an attempt to take them to Japan. He remains charged with conspiracy, economic espionage and interstate shipment of a stolen property.

Serizawa, 41, admitted lying to FBI agents Sept. 2, 1999, when he denied having recent contact with Okamoto, denied knowing that Okamoto had taken a research position with a Japanese research firm and misstated the number of research vials he kept for Okamoto.

After charges were filed in 2001, KU Medical Center officials allowed Serizawa to return to KU under “increased supervision,” McCulloch said. Serizawa was notified earlier this year his contract would not be renewed, and he has since finished a research project and now spends little time on the campus, McCulloch said.

“He has no active projects going,” he said. “He’s basically doing little more than coming in and picking up his mail.”

The incident involving Serizawa grabbed national headlines and was covered in Tokyo. But McCulloch said officials at KU Medical Center saw no reason to alter their policies and say the incident shouldn’t lead to a public relations problem.

“We have to emphasize there is no violation of research going on on this campus,” McCulloch said. “There is no loss of integrity of our research. This was a personal situation between Mr. Serizawa and the other research in Cleveland. It has not and will not impact anything here.”

Attempts to reach Serizawa on Monday were unsuccessful. He told the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week the incident has ruined his career.

“I spent more than 17 years for this career,” he said. “It suddenly disappeared, destroyed. Nothing is here.”

He said he hoped to continue his research in the United States.

“Today is the first day to start to rebuild my life,” Serizawa told the court before he was sentenced. “I deeply regret that my actions … have brought me before you today.”

Meanwhile, a pair of Stanford University professors have established a network to help Serizawa pay his legal bills, which he says have reached $450,000. The professors — David Zapol and Diana Laird — also have started a petition seeking a pardon for Serizawa on a Web site, www.drseri.org.

Zapol and Laird didn’t return phone calls Monday. The petition, however, explains their reasons for asking for a pardon.

“The case represents an unprecedented assault on traditional scientific practices facilitating the free exchange of ideas and research materials so necessary to the collaborative research required for the world we live in and its future,” it says. “Dr. Serizawa is a highly respected, decent and honorable man, who did nothing more than honor a request from a colleague, whom he held in the highest regard, by storing that colleague’s research materials.”