The Idaho Attorney General’s office has concluded that researchers at a University of Idaho center in Post Falls broke no state laws in mixing the interests of the university and two private companies that benefited the researchers.

The Center for Advanced Microelectronics and Biomolecular Research and then-director Gary Maki were the subject of a university audit in 2005 that found the center’s officials deliberately and improperly used university resources to “further private business interests” – namely, two businesses formed by CAMBR researchers and run in close alignment with the center.

The audit concluded that company work was done on university time, that university employees had a profit-sharing arrangement with one company, and that university resources were used for company business, such as testing products. The audit said the conflicts were a violation of university policy and possibly of state law.

The Idaho attorney general’s office opened a criminal investigation into the audit findings in 2006, but a lawyer for former CAMBR researchers that sued the UI for allegedly being punished for raising questions about conflicts of interest, says that she was notified in March by the AG’s office that it had concluded its investigation and decided there was no violation of Idaho law.

Still, investigators with the space agency NASA, which provides a large share of funding for CAMBR, are still probing how the center’s officials handled federal grants over the years.

In the meantime, the UI has reorganized its staff at the center, bringing in a new director and allowing Maki to focus chiefly on leading the research.

CAMBR researches computer chips and microprocessors that routinely go into space on major projects like the Hubble Space Telescope. The center has brought in more than $17 million in grants since setting up in Post Falls in 2002.