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A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was shot to death at his home near Boston, and authorities said Tuesday they were launching a homicide investigation.
Nuno FG Loureiroa 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, was shot Monday night at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. He died at a local hospital on Tuesday, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
The prosecutor’s office said no suspects were in custody as of Tuesday afternoon, and its investigation was ongoing.
Loureiro, who joined MIT in 2016, was named last year to lead MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he aims to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of the school’s largest laboratories, had more than 250 people working in seven buildings when he took charge.
Loureiro, who is 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 shines a bright light as a teacher, friend, mentor, colleague and leader, and is universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told the campus publication.
MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, said in a statement that Loureiro’s death was a “shocking loss.”
The Brookline homicide investigation comes as police in Providence, Rhode Island, about 50 miles away, continue to searchthe gunman who killed two studentsand injured nine others at Brown University on Saturday. The FBI on Tuesday said it knew of no connection between the crimes.
A 22-year-old Boston University student who lives near Loureiro’s apartment in Brookline told The Boston Globe she heard three loud noises Monday night and feared they were gunshots. “I never heard anything so loud, so I thought they were gunshots,” Liv Schachner was quoted as saying. “It’s hard to understand. It seems like it’s going on.”
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 US ambassador to Portugal, John J. Arrigo, expressed his condolences in an online post honoring Loureiro for his leadership and contributions to science.
“It’s not hyperbole to say that MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,”Loureiro saidwhen he was named to head the plasma science lab last year. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
