Authorities are searching for a suspect in the killing of Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a prominent physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was shot at his home near Boston. The 47-year-old professor from Portugal was shot Monday night and died Tuesday at a local hospital.
Authorities have not provided any details about a possible motive in the killing or any other details. No suspects were in custody as of Wednesday morning, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said.
The shooting in Brookline, Massachusetts, took place just days after a deadly shooting at another prestigious school in the region, Brown University, where police are searching for a gunman who killed two students and injured nine others. The FBI says it knows of no connection between the crimes.
Finding solutions to the world’s problems
Loureiro joined MIT in 2016 and was named to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center last year, where he aimed to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of the school’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm.
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 studied the behavior of plasma and worked to uncover the physics behind astronomical phenomena like solar flares. His work, according to his obituary in the MIT News, “involved the design of fusion devices that could harness the energy of fusing plasmas, bringing the dream of clean, near-limitless fusion power closer to reality.”
“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.”
Sadness and shock over Loureiro’s death
“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.
Deepto Chakrabarty, the William A. M. Burden professor in astrophysics and head of the Department of Physics, described him as a “champion for plasma physics within the Physics Department, a wonderful and engaging colleague, and an inspiring and caring mentor for graduate students working in plasma science.”
The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, said the “shocking loss for our community comes in a period of disturbing violence in many other places,”
The Portuguese president’s office also put out a condolence statement Tuesday calling his death “an irreparable loss for science and for all those with whom he worked and lived.”
Killing comes amid search for Brown shooting suspect
The investigation into the MIT professor’s killing comes as Brown University, just 50 miles (80 kilometers) away in Providence, Rhode Island, is still reeling from Saturday’s deadly shooting. With the search for the Brown University shooter in its fifth day Wednesday, authorities were asking the public to review any security or phone footage from the week before the attack in the hopes it might help investigators identify the suspect, believing he may have cased the scene ahead of time.
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