MIT Plasma Center Director Shot Dead at Brookline Apartment

Nuno Filipe Gomes Loureiro, 47, a Portuguese born theoretical plasma physicist and an MIT professor in the departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Physics, was fatally shot at his apartment on Gibbs Street in Brookline on the evening of December 15. Brookline police said they responded to a call reporting gunshots at about 8:30 p.m. and located a victim who had been shot multiple times. Loureiro was transported to a Boston hospital and pronounced dead early on December 16.

Neighbors reported hearing “three loud bangs” that night, one resident told reporters, initially thinking the sounds were someone kicking a door. Local authorities have not released additional details about suspects, motive, or potential charges. Norfolk County prosecutors opened a homicide investigation and law enforcement officials said the circumstances remain under active review.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth addressed the campus in a message that conveyed deep sorrow, writing that Loureiro “died early this morning from gunshot wounds he sustained a few hours before.” The message extended sympathies to Loureiro’s wife and family and noted that campus counseling and support resources were being made available to students and staff. Institutional profiles list Loureiro as the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, a role he assumed in May 2024.

Loureiro, born in 1977 in Viseu, Portugal, earned undergraduate and engineering degrees from Instituto Superior Técnico and received his Ph.D. from Imperial College London in 2005. His doctoral thesis was titled Studies of nonlinear tearing mode reconnection. He joined MIT’s faculty in 2016 and in 2025 received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, an honor cited in biographical summaries.

The Plasma Science and Fusion Center is one of MIT’s largest laboratory complexes, hosting more than 250 full time researchers, students and staff across seven buildings. Colleagues and peers in the scientific community expressed shock and sadness at Loureiro’s sudden death. MIT communications said the many communities to which he belonged would in time create opportunities to mourn his life and remember his contributions.

The immediate practical effects on research programs and institutional operations are uncertain. The PSFC conducts experimental and theoretical work that is connected to broader efforts to advance magnetic confinement fusion and related plasma science. Leadership transitions at a center of this scale typically require rapid administrative steps to ensure continuing projects, manage personnel impacts and preserve relationships with federal and industrial partners. MIT has not announced interim leadership arrangements.

Investigators asked anyone with information to contact Brookline police, and officials cautioned that details remain preliminary. Police and county prosecutors have not disclosed whether forensic or surveillance evidence has been recovered, nor whether there are persons of interest. As the homicide inquiry proceeds, the academic community is grappling with the loss of a prominent scientist whose work bridged fundamental theory and applied fusion research.