A Harvard University professor was convicted on Tuesday of US charges that he lied about his ties to a China-run recruitment programme in a closely-watched case stemming from a crackdown on Chinese influence within US research.

A federal jury in Boston found Charles Lieber, a renowned nanoscientist and the former chairperson of Harvard's chemistry department, guilty of making false statements to authorities, filing false tax returns and failing to report a Chinese bank account.

Prosecutors alleged that Lieber, in his quest for a Nobel Prize, in 2011 agreed to become a "strategic scientist" at Wuhan University of Technology in China and...