According to court documents Jichun Zhang of Durham used a college credit account funded by a NASA grant to purchase almost $7,000 worth of items from Amazon, eBay and other websites.
The case was a joint investigation conducted by the UNH police department, the FBI, NASA and other law enforcement agencies.
Zhang will be sentenced in March of 2019.
This is the second former UNH employee to plead guilty to misusing federal grants, with another researcher admitting last week to a similar scheme.
