Engineers in clear

Three engineering professors are getting back over Can$300,000 (Pounds 150,000) after being cleared of any misuse of their research funds in an investigation conducted by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Concordia University forced Seshadri Sankar to resign, and his brother Tom Sankar and M. S. Swamy to take early retirement after an independent audit found them at the centre of financial improprieties in the mechanical engineering department.

Although Professor Swamy, who has been invited to resume his work at the University of Toronto, has exercised his right as a retired professor to conduct research at Concordia, the Sankar brothers have only been offered limited research privileges as the university is trying to shed 180 professors.

Concordia rector Frederick Lowy told the Montreal Gazette that "it would send the wrong signal to those professors if we chose this moment to rehire people who had already left".