BROOKLINE, Mass. — A world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor and fusion-energy physicist was shot and killed inside his home earlier this week, an attack that has rattled one of the country’s most elite scientific communities.

Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro, 47, was a professor of nuclear science and engineering and the director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Loureiro was a renowned figure in fusion-energy research, a field that seeks to recreate the power of the sun inside fusion reactors on Earth. His theories and models helped guide major fusion experiments in the United States and Europe.

Loureiro was rushed to a hospital with "apparent gunshot wounds" Monday evening and pronounced dead Tuesday morning, according to the Norfolk District Attorney's Office in Massachusetts. A homicide investigation is underway.

No suspect has been identified and the motive for the killing is still unknown.

The shooting in Brookline occurred two days after an attack at Brown University left two dead and nine injured on Saturday.

While investigators in both cases, at prestigious universities less than 50 miles apart, are sharing intelligence, the special agent in charge of Boston's FBI office, Ted Docks, said at a news briefing Tuesday that authorities don't think they're connected.

Originally from Portugal, Loureiro studied in his home country, in the United Kingdom and in the United States, where he researched topics including the phenomenon behind solar flares. He also focused on plasma — a super-hot form of matter found in stars and in experimental fusion reactors.

Fusion is the process that makes the sun burn and Loureiro’s work explored how that power could be bottled on Earth and controlled inside those reactors. If fusion ever becomes a real source of cheap, clean electricity, it will rely on the kind of physics he helped explain.

"Nuno was not only a brilliant scientist, he was a brilliant person," Dennis Whyte, a fellow MIT professor, said Ph.D. in physics at Imperial College London.

He went on to do post-doctoral work at Princeton University in New Jersey and UKAEA Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in the U.K. and returned to research in Lisbon before joining MIT's faculty in 2016. He became a full professor in 2021 and was later named the director of the school's Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

His research has earned him a half-dozen awards since 2015, most recently honored with the U.S. government's Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, which he received earlier this year.

In a earlier lecture on accepting and overcoming failure, he urged students to set their goals high and not be afraid of falling short.

"If you're not failing all the time, you're aiming too low," he said.