A University of Massachusetts professor has been shot to death at his home, campus officials say.
Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro, 47, a nuclear science and engineering professor from Portugal, was shot “multiple times” on Monday and died in hospital on Tuesday morning, according to Brookline police and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) officials.
Police said officers responded to a call of shots fired at an apartment at about 8:30 p.m. local time. Loureiro was taken by ambulance to Boston Hospital, where he died Tuesday morning.
The Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office said no one is in custody and police are treating the incident as “an active and ongoing homicide investigation.”
A neighbor said she heard “three loud bangs” on Monday evening and thought someone was kicking a door in the apartment building, the BBC’s US media partner CBS News reported.
Longtime resident Anne Greenwald told CBS that the professor had a young family and attended school nearby.
Loureiro graduated in physics from the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon in 2000 and received a PhD in physics from Imperial College London in 2005, according to his faculty web page.
Theoretical physicist and fusion scientist best known for his award-winning research into magnetic plasma dynamics.
By nature, magnetized plasma dynamics is the study of the state of matter in which the motion of charged particles is affected by the presence of an external magnetic field.
Loureiro joined the faculty of MIT in 2016 and was named director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center in 2024.
According to the university’s obituary, his research addressed “the complex problems lurking at the center of fusion vacuum chambers and at the edges of the universe.”
They also studied how to use clean “fusion power” to combat climate change, CBS said.
“Our deepest condolences go out to his family, students, colleagues and everyone who is mourning,” an MIT spokesperson said in a statement to the BBC.
The university said “focused outreach and conversations” are taking place within the MIT community to provide care and support to people who knew the professor.
The center’s previous director, Dennis White, described Loureiro as both a brilliant scientist and a brilliant person.
“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague, and leader and was universally admired for his frank, compassionate manner,” Mr. White told MIT News.
Dipto Chakraborty, head of MIT’s physics department, echoed those sentiments, saying that Loureiro was a champion of plasma physics and that his recent research was “a particularly exciting new scientific direction.”
Correction December 16: An earlier version of this story incorrectly defined the type of plasma researched by Professor Loureiro.
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