By Myles Miller | Bloomberg News
A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fatally shot in his Boston-area home, according to authorities, who said they’re searching for a suspect.
The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said officers responding to a report of a shooting on Gibbs Street in Brookline on Monday found Nuno Loureiro with gunshot wounds. The 47-year-old academic was taken to a nearby hospital and died early Tuesday. The office said the case is being investigated as a homicide and hasn’t released information on a motive or any suspects.
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MIT President Sally Kornbluth in a statement called his death a “shocking loss,” saying the university was focused on supporting his family, students and colleagues as police investigate the circumstances.
Loureiro led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and taught in the departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Physics. The center, one of the school’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm. His research focused on the behavior of magnetized plasmas, including turbulence, magnetic reconnection and confinement, work that is central to advances in fusion energy, according to the university.
Before joining MIT in 2016, he held research appointments at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Britain and the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion in Lisbon. He studied physics at Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal and earned his doctorate at Imperial College London.
Loureiro, who was married, grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before earning a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at an institute for nuclear fusion in Lisbon before joining MIT, it said.
“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told a campus publication.
The incident occurred as authorities continue a manhunt for the person who killed two students Saturday during a rampage at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, which is about 40 miles south of Boston.
“This shocking loss for our community comes in a period of disturbing violence in many other places,” said Kornbluth. “Our hearts go out to his wife and their family and to his many devoted students, friends and colleagues.”
A 22-year-old student at Boston University who lives near Loureiro’s apartment in Brookline told The Boston Globe she heard three loud noises Monday evening and feared it was gunfire. “I had never heard anything so loud, so I assumed they were gunshots,” Liv Schachner was quoted as saying. “It’s difficult to grasp. It just seems like it keeps happening.”
Some of Loureiro’s students visited his home, an apartment in a three-story brick building, Tuesday afternoon to pay their respects, the Globe reported.
The U.S. ambassador to Portugal, John J. Arrigo, expressed his condolences in an online post that honored Loureiro for his leadership and contributions to science.
“It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” Loureiro said when he was named to lead the plasma science lab last year. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”
Bloomber News reporter Janet Lorin and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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