Nuno Loureiro was killed on Monday night in his apartment in Brookline
Police today intensified their search to detain the suspect in the murder of MIT professor Nuno FG Loureiro, two days after he was shot dead at home, on the outskirts of Boston.
Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, was killed Monday night in his apartment 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 that the homicide investigation was “active and ongoing” early this afternoon and that there were no updates — previously, they had said that no suspect was arrested.
The investigation into the death of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) professor comes as Brown University, another prestigious institution just 80 kilometers (50 miles) away in Providence, Rhode Island, recovers from an unsolved shooting that killed two students and injured nine others on Saturday.
On Tuesday, investigators gave no indication that they were any closer to clarifying the case. The investigation focuses on the identity of the shooter.
The FBI said Tuesday it was not aware of any link between the crimes.
Meanwhile, dozens of people gathered outside Loureiro’s building on Tuesday night, many with candles in hand, to honor the professor’s life and support his family. Neighbors received paper notices taped to their doors to place candles in their windows in honor of the teacher.
Some people cried and supported each other, but most of those present remained silent, their breathing visible in the harsh cold. Some children came on scooters from nearby houses to the meeting.
The murder happened when most MIT students were on winter break, and more than a dozen of them on the Cambridge campus declined to talk about it today. Most said they didn’t know him.
A 22-year-old Boston University student who lives near Loureiro’s Brookline apartment told The Boston Globe that she heard three loud noises on Monday night and feared gunshots. “I had never heard anything so loud, so I assumed it was ‘Gunshots,'” quoted Liv Schachner.
“It’s hard to understand. It just seems to keep happening.”
Loureiro, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead MIT’s Center for Plasma and Fusion Science, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other areas of research.
The center, one of the school’s largest laboratories, had more than 250 people working in seven buildings when he took over.
Loureiro was a professor of physics and nuclear engineering and science.
He grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before obtaining a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at a nuclear fusion institute in Lisbon before joining MIT, the university said. “He shone brightly as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague, and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate and compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously led MIT’s Center for Plasma and Fusion Science, told a campus publication.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a statement that the murder was a “shocking loss.”
The office of Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also issued a statement of condolences, considering Loureiro’s death “an irreparable loss for science and for all those with whom he worked and lived.”
Loureiro had said he hoped his work would shape the future. “It’s no exaggeration to say that MIT is the place to go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” he said when he was named to lead the plasma science laboratory last year. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history,” he added.
The death of physicist Nuno Loureiro was announced in Portugal by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paulo Rangel, during a parliamentary hearing, without providing further information.
The Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), in Lisbon, where the physicist graduated and carried out research, recalled, in a statement, the “brilliant colleague with whom it was a scientific and personal pleasure to collaborate”.
Quoted in 2024 by IST, Nuno Loureiro argued that “fusion energy will change the course of human history”.
In the United States, he received, in 2017, the Career Award from the National Science Foundation and, more recently, in 2025, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, granted in January by then President Joe Biden.
