US: MIT professor Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro gunned down at home, neighbours heard 'three loud bangs'

Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro, 47, a Portuguese national and a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was shot multiple times and later succumbed to his injuries at a Boston hospital on Tuesday morning, according to Brookline police and MIT officials, the BBC reported.

Police said they responded to reports of gunfire at an apartment in Brookline at around 8:30 pm local time on Monday. Loureiro was rushed to hospital, where he later died.

No arrests have been made so far, and the incident is being treated as “an active and ongoing homicide investigation,” the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement quoted by the BBC.

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A neighbour told CBS News that he heard “three loud bangs” on Monday evening.

“I thought at first it was somebody in our apartment kicking in a door or something, so I called the neighbours and they said no — they thought it was gunshots,” he said.

Anne Greenwald, a resident of the neighbourhood for 40 years, said she and her husband also heard noises that sounded like gunshots.
“He had a young family; they went to school here,” she said. “It’s horrible, very scary.”

Who was Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro?

According to the MIT website, Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro was a Professor of Physics and Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the institute.

He earned his Master of Engineering degree in Physics from Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2000, and completed his PhD in Physics at Imperial College London in 2005.

Loureiro received several prestigious honours during his career, including the Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research from the American Physical Society in 2015, the ANS Faculty PAI Outstanding Professor award in 2017, and the US National Science Foundation’s CAREER award in 2017.

Reacting to his death, Dennis Whyte, Hitachi America Professor of Engineering and former head of MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, said in a statement to MIT News:“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner. His loss is immeasurable to our community at the PSFC, NSE and MIT, and across the global fusion and plasma research world.”

Deepto Chakrabarty, the William A. M. Burden Professor in Astrophysics and head of MIT’s Department of Physics, described Loureiro as “a champion for plasma physics” within the department.

“He was a wonderful and engaging colleague, and an inspiring and caring mentor for graduate students working in plasma science,” Chakrabarty told the news portal, adding that Loureiro’s recent work on quantum computing algorithms for plasma physics simulations marked “a particularly exciting new scientific direction.”