\n<\/p>\n
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) community is grieving after the \u201cshocking\u201d shooting death of the director of its plasma science and fusion center, according to officials.<\/p>\n
Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, had been shot multiple times at his home in Brookline on Monday night when police said they received a call to investigate. Emergency responders brought Loureiro to a hospital, and the award-winning scientist was pronounced dead there Tuesday morning, the Norfolk county district attorney\u2019s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The statement from the district attorney\u2019s office said an investigation into Loureiro\u2019s slaying remained ongoing later Tuesday. But the agency did not immediately release any details about a possible suspect or motive in the killing, which gained widespread attention across academic circles, the US and in Loureiro\u2019s native Portugal.<\/p>\n
Portugal\u2019s minster of foreign affairs announced Loureiro\u2019s death in a public hearing Tuesday, as CNN reported.<\/p>\n
Separately, MIT president Sally Kornbluth issued a university-wide letter expressing \u201cgreat sadness\u201d over the death of Loureiro, whose survivors include his wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis shocking loss for our community comes in a period of disturbing violence in many other places,\u201d said Kornbluth\u2019s letter, released after a weekend marred by deadly mass shootings at Brown University in Rhode Island as well as on Australia\u2019s Bondi Beach.<\/p>\n
The letter concluded by providing a list of mental health resources, saying: \u201cIt\u2019s entirely natural to feel the need for comfort and support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kornbluth said Loureiro was born in central Portugal, and had aspired to be a scientist since childhood.<\/p>\n
He obtained undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in physics from Lisbon\u2019s Instituto Superior T\u00e9cnico and London\u2019s Imperial College, respectively. He completed postdoctoral work at Princeton University\u2019s plasma physics laboratory in New Jersey and at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, which is the UK\u2019s national lab for such research.<\/p>\n
Loureiro then returned to Portugal to serve as the principal investigator for the Instituto Superior T\u00e9cnico\u2019s institute for plasmas and nuclear fusion before joining MIT\u2019s faculty in 2016.<\/p>\n
In 2022, MIT appointed him as the deputy director of its plasma science and fusion center. Loureiro had been that lab\u2019s director since May 2024.<\/p>\n
Loureiro in January received one of fewer than 400 early career awards for scientists and engineers given out by Joe Biden, who was reaching the end of his presidency at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity\u2019s biggest problems,\u201d Loureiro said upon being appointed to direct one of the university\u2019s largest labs, according to Kornbluth\u2019s letter. \u201cFusion is a hard problem, but it can be solved with resolve and ingenuity \u2013 characteristics that define MIT.<\/p>\n
\u201cFusion energy will change the course of human history. It\u2019s both humbling and exciting to be leading a research center that will play a key role in enabling that change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) community is grieving after the \u201cshocking\u201d shooting death of the director of its plasma science and fusion center, according to officials. Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, had been shot multiple times at his home in Brookline on Monday night when police said they received a call to investigate. Emergency responders<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[2110,376,2107,20833,2041,10232,9413,6638,15357,516,4527,722],"class_list":{"0":"post-37836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-center","9":"tag-death","10":"tag-director","11":"tag-grieves","12":"tag-institute","13":"tag-massachusetts","14":"tag-mit","15":"tag-plasma","16":"tag-renowned","17":"tag-science","18":"tag-shooting","19":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}