National Science Foundation headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. (Photo: ShutterFlash/Shutterstock.com)

A former Georgia Tech professor honored for his work by President George W. Bush has been sentenced to home confinement and ordered to pay restitution for his role in a scheme to defraud the National Science Foundation, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta announced Tuesday.

Maysam Ghovanloo.

Maysam Ghovanloo, 46, of Atlanta—who resigned as a tenured professor at Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering last June—will serve eight months of home confinement and pay $40,000 in restitution after pleading guilty in August to wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Byung J. "BJay" Pak said.

"Grant funding is limited, and the competition for those dollars is keen," Pak said in announcing the sentence. "People awarded grants to do research and development vow that they will adhere to the rules governing it. Ghovanloo decided to sacrifice his reputation by dodging those rules and lying."

Ghovanloo is also barred for three years from doing business with the government, Pak said.

Judge Steve Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia sentenced Ghovanloo after he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in August.

Ghovanloo owned and operated Bionic Sciences, which received federal grants through the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovation Research program, according to prosecutors and court records. The program provides small businesses with funding for research that will lead to the commercialization of new products and services.

But according to the U.S. attorney, Ghovanloo and his company made "materially false and fraudulent statements" or omissions in submitting electronic payment requests to the National Science Foundation.

Chief among the false statements was Ghovanloo's failure to notify the National Science Foundation that his collaborator in a project was no longer involved, and his assertion that the project had been completed successfully and was eligible for a followup grant, according to a sentencing memorandum.

Ghovanloo's attorney, Craig Gillen of Atlanta's Gillen, Withers & Lake, couldn't be reached for comment. But Gillen argued in a sentencing memorandum that, while what Ghovanloo did was wrong, "Unlike most federal funding fraud cases, the work product generated by the grant funds was excellent" and received followup funding because it "was so outstanding."

Ghovanloo was honored at the White House at a reception in 2008 recognizing outstanding members of the Muslim community. Bush specifically praised the professor for his work in biomedical engineering and singled out his tongue drive system, according to a sentencing memorandum. That system enables people with severe physical disabilities to use tongue motion to access computers, smartphones and drive their wheelchairs.

Gillen said that Ghovanloo's achievements in designing technology to aid people with significant disabilities does not "explain away the seriousness of the federal violation" to which Ghovanloo pleaded guilty. "It is to explain that, although Dr. Ghovanloo did commit the charged offense, his work was not a fraud but rather an excellent endeavor to help many people with physical disabilities."

"Moreover," Gillen added, "Dr. Ghovanloo's work was not about personal enrichment. In most federal programs fraud cases, the defendants defraud the government by submitting false or inflated invoices for little or no work to scam the government and enrich themselves. This is not the case here. … During some months, while others were paid for their monthly work, Dr. Ghovanloo would receive less money than others in the projects and even, for some months, he paid himself nothing at all."