Who was Nuno Loureiro? What to know about MIT professor killed by Brown University shooter
The MIT professor killed by a gunman in the foyer of his apartment building in Brookline on Monday night knew his attacker — the same man responsible for opening fire at Brown University days earlier, killing two students and injuring nine.
Nuno Loureiro, 47, was found with multiple gunshot wounds around 8 p.m. Monday in his apartment building on Gibbs Street . He died at a hospital the following morning.
Anyone can walk into the apartment building and ring the buzzer for any of the three units. The gunman, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente , 48, appears to have targeted Loureiro, his former classmate at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal.
Both men excelled at the school, according to the Washington Post .
Neves Valente left with near-perfect grades, either near or at the top of his class, the university said, according to the newspaper.
A fellow student, 48-year-old Nuno Morais, told the paper that both men were friendly, but Moureiro had a more relaxed attitude than the highly competitive Neves Valente.
"In some elite schools, there's a culture where individual success is measured by academic performance, and in that sense, students usually feel they can only succeed if they are the best of the best," Morais said.
Loureiro graduated with a degree in physics in 2000. That same fall, Neves Valente enrolled at Brown.
Neves Valente sought a career like what Loureiro achieved, Morais told the Post. But his time at Brown was a disappointment, according to the former classmate.
Whether the two men ever crossed paths again is not known, nor is Neves Valente's motive for the killing of Loureiro.
"He was very careful in his communications, and we just don't have any information right now to answer that question," U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley said Thursday night.
Initially, investigators said they had no evidence linking the shooting of Loureiro to the mass shooting at Brown University two days prior that killed two students and injured nine.
But eventually, they developed information that suggested a link between the two, after a car Neves Valente was driving was seen near both scenes.
In his quiet Brookline neighborhood, neighbors were still on edge Thursday before authorities announced Neves Valente had been identified as the shooter and that he had taken his own life in a Salem, New Hampshire storage facility.
Authorities reported Friday that Neves Valente had killed himself the day after he shot and killed his former classmate.
Neves Valente is believed to have used different guns to carry out the attacks, though 9mm casings were found at both scenes.
One of Loureiro's neighbors, who lives next door, recalled him as a "great man."
"He didn't deserve this," the neighbor said as he walked into his apartment.
Loureiro, who was married, joined MIT in 2016. He was a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the university and was elevated to lead the Plasma Science and Fusion Center in 2024.
The center, one of the school's largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm.
Loureiro studied the behavior of plasma and worked to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares. His research, according to his obituary on MIT's news site, "involved the design of fusion devices that could harness the energy of fusing plasmas, bringing the dream of clean, near-limitless fusion power closer to reality."
"He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner," Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously led MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told a campus publication.
The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, said in a statement that the killing was a "shocking loss."
The office of Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also put out a condolence statement calling Loureiro's death "an irreparable loss for science and for all those with whom he worked and lived."
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report .
Brown University Shooting, Dec. 13, 2025
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