The investigation comes after authorities accused a Chinese scientist and his girlfriend working in the school's lab of smuggling a toxic fungus into the U.S.

The University of Michigan is under federal scrutiny after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the United States.

"Today, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of the General Counsel (OGC) opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) after a review of the university's foreign reports revealed inaccurate and incomplete disclosures," the DOE said in a news release.