A Rutgers University professor has been placed on leave and prohibited from teaching or undertaking any research following accusations of animal abuse from a previous employer.

Xiaobing Zhang, an associate professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, has been on leave since Sept. 14, when the university received a letter from an animal rights group.

The letter accuses Zhang of mistreating animals at his previous research lab at Florida State University.

"He was involved in violations of federal regulations which were so severe that he was barred from performing animal research for a year," the letter said.

Zhang left the school before the penalty was carried out, "potentially to carry on the bungled research project without undergoing penalties," it added.

According to an anonymous complaint filed with the FSU Animal Care & Use Committee on March 25, two FSU graduate students accused Zhang of abusing laboratory mice during surgical studies.

The students said Zhang's lab gave mice only one of the four authorized doses of pain treatment. They also added that the lab was modifying records to mask the mistreatment, investigators said. Zhang was also accused of failing to sedate mice before decapitating them.

The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

After an investigation, FSU officials suspended part of the $413,000 research project and barred Zhang and two other staff from working in their lab for a year, according to NJ.com.

Before being placed on paid administrative leave, Zhang had been employed at Rutgers for less than two weeks. A Rutgers spokeswoman told the outlet that Zhang started working at the university on Sept. 3 and had not worked on any projects involving animals. However, the school declined to disclose Zhang's vetting procedure before he was hired or whether they knew about the animal abuse allegations.

Nearly 60 people have signed a petition against Zhang and are calling for a full probe into the case.

Tags Rutgers University, Professor