Judge Steve Jones, District Court of the United States, swore in George Carley (foreground) as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia on May 29, 2012. (AJC 2012 photo file)
In December, Lee pleaded guilty to falsifying the membership certificate behind a $ 40,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and then lied about it when questioned by federal investigators. As part of her sentence, Lee was ordered to pay $ 40,000 in restitution to NSF.
Following her guilty plea, Georgia Tech banned Lee from campus, cutting off her access to the 200 laboratory computers she will use to fight the pandemic. The institute also denied repeated requests from top U.S. health officials to restore Lee’s access to her computers while COVID-19 became nationwide.
Lee’s expertise, recognized worldwide, encompasses computational methods that sort through large, complex sets of data to find the most optimal answers to public health emergencies.
Lee used model programs to create mass drug dispensing programs for attacks of pandemics and bioterrorism. She has helped with projects involving border security, early disease diagnosis, human trafficking and prostate cancer. She helped Grady Memorial Hospital eliminate an alarming rate of infections related to open heart surgery.
Its RealOpt computer scheduling system helped public health officials respond to the H1N1 virus outbreak, an earthquake in Haiti, a nuclear accident in Japan, the Ebola virus outbreak and, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic.
Instead of monetizing RealOpt, Lee made it available for free in all 50 states, where more than 14,000 users deploy it to respond to cases of public health, said Mark Prausnitz, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Georgia Tech.
“She is a national hero and a treasure,” Prausnitz said.
Lee’s colleague was one of several who testified on her behalf. Witnesses described her as a selfless, inspiring teacher who loved her students and often took inferior students for minorities under her wing to give her hope.
Prausnitz was also one of a number of people who wrote letters to U.S. Attorney BJay Pak urging him to await Lee’s verdict – essentially dismissing the case altogether – or to reduce her crimes to crimes. .
“If Dr. Lee were convicted of a crime, it would seriously jeopardize her ability to continue to serve students, society, and the American people,” Prausnitz wrote.
Thomas Wilkinson, chief medical officer for Homeland Security, made a similar plea. “I ask that you postpone the prosecution of Dr Lee’s case so that we can return to their focus on projects of national significance,” he said.
Pak, who refused to do so, declined to comment.
During the sentencing hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Russell Phillips said he was aware of those who believe Lee should not be prosecuted “because she is too valuable, too important or too special.”
But Lee broke federal law, he said. “No one is above the law. It does not matter how rich you are, how smart you are, how powerful you are, how important you are, you are not above the law. ”
Lee’s attorney, Buddy Parker, told Jones that although his client was excluded from her computers at Georgia Tech, she continued her work on the pandemic of a computer set up in her kitchen. Her sense of service encompasses “an undoubted willingness to go above and beyond what many think is simply obligatory,” he said.
March 16, 2020 – Atlanta – Georgia Tech Professor Eva Lee is one of the most renowned experts in math modeling and has helped cities, states and countries deal with natural disasters, terrorist attacks and infectious diseases. Lee works for national and state agencies to try and contain the coronavirus. Bob Andres / [email protected]
Credit: Bob Andres
Credit: Bob Andres
Lee, who broke in several times during the Zoom hearing, pleaded guilty to Jones’ charges for her offenses. She acknowledged that her actions disconnected her from the students she taught, the emergency nurses who relied on her, and the hospital patients she wanted to help treat.
“So my punishment means punishing all these people and it feels terrible to me,” she said. “I would like to continue my service for hospitals, for students, for small children. Please forgive my mistakes. ‘
