#mit professor

Brown University shooting live updates: Police probing whether suspect is tied to MIT killing; person of interest identified

Earlier this week the FBI said there was nothing at that stage of the investigation to link the shooting at Brown with the killing of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro.

What we know about the shooting

Police are looking into whether the fatal shooting this week of an MIT professor in Brookline, Massachusetts, is linked to the mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday, according to law enforcement officials.

The search for the Brown gunman continued into a sixth day after two people were killed and nine others were wounded at the campus in Providence, Rhode Island.

A person of interest has been identified by law enforcement in connection with that shooting, three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation say.

Officials released photos through the week showing a person of interest walking through the neighborhood near campus. Police also released surveillance images of a person walking past the person of interest.

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Nuno Loureiro, a professor of nuclear science and engineering and of physics at MIT, has died. He was 47.

In a letter to the MIT community, President Sally Kornbluth wrote, “With great sadness, I write to share the tragic news that Professor Nuno Loureiro, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), died early this morning from gunshot wounds he sustained a few hours before. In the face of this shocking loss, our hearts go out to his wife and their family and to his many devoted students, friends and colleagues.”

Mildred S. Dresselhaus -- the celebrated MIT professor known as the "Queen of Carbon Science," whose research helped unlock the mysteries of carbon -- was born on this day in 1930. A member of the MIT faculty for 50 years, the solid-state physicist was the first woman to ever attain the rank of full, tenured professor at the university. Dresselhaus was also the first woman to win the National Medal of Science in Engineering and was known nationally for her work to develop wider opportunities for women in science and engineering. The author of eight books and 1,700 scientific papers, “Millie’s dedication to research was unparalleled, and her enthusiasm was infectious,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, head of MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering. “For the past half-century, students, faculty and researchers at MIT and around the world have been inspired by her caring advice... She made such a huge impact on MIT, and her contributions will long be remembered.”

Born to Polish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York in 1930, Dresselhaus originally intended to become a teacher, but Rosalyn Yalow -- who herself would go on to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine -- encouraged her to consider a career in physics. After studying under Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi at the Univeristy of Chicago, Dresselhaus came to MIT in 1960 and became a permanent member of the electrical engineering faculty in 1968. Over her long career, she made fundamental discoveries in the electronic structure of semi-metals; wrote a definitive text on fullerenes, the spherical molecules better known as buckyballs; and was especially well-known for her research on nanomaterials. When Dresselhaus was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015, the White House described her as “one of the most prominent physicists, materials scientists, and electrical engineers of her generation.”

For decades, Dresselhaus, who died in 2017 at the age of 86, worked to advance greater gender equality in science and engineering. In 1971, she and a colleague organized the first Women’s Forum at MIT in 1971. Two years later, she received a Carnegie Foundation grant to continue exploring ways to encourage women in science and engineering. She also supervised more than 60 doctoral candidates, leaving her mark on the field for years to come. When she gave the keynote speech at 2015’s Rising Stars in EECS, a three-day workshop for female graduate students and postdocs, Dresselhaus focused on the importance of persistence, relating stories about her own graduate work with legendary physicist Enrico Fermi, whose program was notoriously difficult. “It was what you did that counted,” she said, “and that followed me through life.”