Homicide investigation launched after MIT professor fatally shot at home

A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fatally shot at his home near Boston, and authorities said on Tuesday they had launched a homicide investigation.

Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, was shot Monday night at his home 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 no suspects had been taken into custody as of Tuesday afternoon, and that its investigation was ongoing.

Loureiro, who joined MIT in 2016, was named last year to lead MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Centre, where he aimed to advance clean energy technology and other research. The centre, one of the school’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm.

Loureiro, who was married, grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before earning a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at an institute for nuclear fusion in Lisbon before joining MIT, it said.