MIT Fusion Center Director Loureiro Dies After Being Shot at His Brookline Home

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, announced on December 16 that Nuno F. G. Loureiro, director of its Plasma Science and Fusion Center and a professor of physics and of nuclear science and engineering, had died early that morning from gunshot wounds, at the age of 47. He had been shot the previous evening in the foyer of his apartment building on Gibbs Street in Brookline, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, and was pronounced dead early on December 16 after being taken to a hospital.

In a letter to the MIT community, President Sally Kornbluth wrote that she shared the tragic news with great sadness: Professor Loureiro, the director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, had died early that morning from gunshot wounds he sustained a few hours before. The Norfolk County District Attorney's Office said Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the office were assisting Brookline police, that the case was being treated as an active and ongoing homicide investigation, and that no one was in custody as of December 16, with no further information being released at that time.

Born in Portugal in 1977, Loureiro studied in Lisbon and London and worked at institutions including the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory before joining MIT's faculty in 2016. His research addressed magnetized plasma dynamics, magnetic reconnection, and confinement and transport in fusion plasmas, advancing scientists' understanding of plasma turbulence, uncovering the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares, and helping inform the design of fusion devices. He became the center's deputy director in 2022 and its director in May 2024, and held the Herman Feshbach (1942) Professorship of Physics.

Related: Gunman Kills 2 Students and Wounds 9 at Brown University During Final-Exam Review Session

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 图：位于美国马萨诸塞州 Cambridge 市的麻省理工学院大穹顶（资料照片，2021年2月摄）。Peacearth 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The Great Dome of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts (file photo, February 2021). Photo by Peacearth, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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