MIT professor Nuno Loureiro shot at home in Brookline; investigators search for suspect

A prominent MIT physicist was shot at his Brookline home Monday night and died Tuesday, authorities said, as investigators search for a suspect and a motive in the killing of Nuno F.G. Loureiro. The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said there were no suspects in custody as of Wednesday morning, and officials have not disclosed a possible motive. The shooting occurred days after a deadly attack at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where police have yet to identify a suspect; the FBI said it knows of no connection between the two crimes.

Loureiro, 47, a Portugal native who joined MIT in 2016, was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, one of the university’s largest laboratories. The center comprises about 250 researchers working across seven buildings and focuses on advancing clean energy technology and related research. Loureiro’s research centered on the behavior of plasma and the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares, with MIT describing his work as contributing to the design of fusion devices that could harness the energy of fusing plasmas and bring fusion power closer to reality. When he became head of the plasma lab, he told MIT News, “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”

It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” said Dennis Whyte, a former head of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and a professor of engineering, in a campus publication. Deepto Chakrabarty, head of MIT’s Department of Physics, called Loureiro a “champion for plasma physics,” a valued colleague and a mentor to graduate students. MIT President Sally Kornbluth called the loss a shocking one for a community already confronting broader concerns about violence. The Portuguese president’s office offered condolences, calling Loureiro’s death “an irreparable loss for science and for all those with whom he worked and lived.”

In Providence, Brown University continues to reassess security and response after Saturday’s campus shooting, which killed two students and wounded nine others. As investigators pursue the case, authorities urged the public to review security and cellphone footage from the week prior to the attack, noting that the gunman may have cased the area beforehand. Authorities at Brown have not identified a suspect, and the FBI has said there is no known connection to Loureiro’s killing. The two incidents illustrate a broader period of violence near major academic campuses in the Northeast.

Loureiro grew up in Viseu in central Portugal, studied in Lisbon, and earned a doctoral degree in London. Before moving to MIT, he worked at a nuclear fusion research institute in Lisbon. His obituary on MIT’s site highlights his work on plasma dynamics and the pursuit of fusion-based energy, a field the university has described as central to its mission of advancing clean energy technologies.