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New details are emerging about the suspected gunman in the killings of an MIT scientist and two Brown University students, with a top Portuguese nuclear fusion official telling the Daily Mail the suspect may have fixated on the victim as a symbol of success he never achieved.
Authorities say Nuno Loureiro, 47, a world-renowned fusion-energy researcher and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was shot on Dec. 15 and died hours later. Police believe the gunman was Claudio Neves-Valente, 48, a onetime physics prodigy from Portugal who later died by suicide after a multistate manhunt.
The case widened dramatically after authorities identified Neves-Valente as the suspect in a mass shooting at Brown University days earlier. Police say Neves-Valente opened fire on Dec. 13 inside a campus building, killing two students and injuring nine others. Investigators later confirmed he was also responsible for the Dec. 15 fatal shooting of Loureiro at his Brookline, Massachusetts, home.
Neves-Valente was a Portuguese national and former Brown student who studied physics from the fall of 2000 through the spring of 2001 before withdrawing from the program by 2003, according to Brown University President Christina Paxson. She emphasized that Neves-Valente had no recent affiliation with the university at the time of the campus shooting.
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According to the Daily Mail, Dr. Bruno Goncalves, president of Portugal’s Institute of Plasma and Nuclear Fusion, said Neves-Valente did not maintain any known relationship with Loureiro in the decades after they studied together there, underscoring that the attack was not the result of an ongoing rivalry or dispute.
Instead, Goncalves said Neves-Valente may have fixated on what Loureiro had come to represent.
“The strongest theory is that Claudio saw Nuno as a symbol of the academic and professional success that he himself had failed to achieve,” Goncalves said.
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He stressed that the resentment was one-sided and did not exist during their student years.
“It’s not a rivalry that existed at the time,” Goncalves said, adding that it “developed later.”
Goncalves also rejected claims that institutional pressure or academic culture bore responsibility for the violence, telling the Daily Mail that Portugal’s elite technical universities provide psychological support and that many graduates successfully transition into other careers.
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“It was not the course,” he said. “It was how Claudio chose to respond to the course.”
While noting that Neves-Valente may have struggled after leaving elite academia, Goncalves emphasized that others in similar circumstances did not resort to violence.
“It’s strange,” Goncalves said, according to the Daily Mail, “that he didn’t just try to make something of himself in another field, like many IST students do.”
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Law enforcement officials said Loureiro had no recent contact with Neves-Valente and described the attack as a deliberate, unilateral act of criminal violence carried out against a victim unconnected to his personal or professional failures.
At the time of his death, Loureiro was widely regarded as one of the leading figures in fusion-energy research.
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Loureiro met last year with Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), both at MIT and at an international fusion summit in Rome that brought together senior government officials, scientists, and global energy leaders.
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He was also recently named a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor awarded by the U.S. government to early-career researchers, with recipients recognized at the White House.
Goncalves told Fox News Digital previously that Loureiro was “leading one of the top research institutes in fusion” and was “very well known and recognized internationally for his contributions and his leadership.”
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Loureiro lived in a Brookline condominium with his wife and three daughters. His mother-in-law was visiting at the time of the shooting, according to the Daily Mail. Friends and neighbors described the family as quiet and close-knit, and authorities have said there is no indication Loureiro anticipated any threat.
Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
Stepheny Price covers crime, including missing persons, homicides and migrant crime. Send story tips to [email protected].
