The murdered professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was on the brink of revolutionizing the energy sector and upending fossil fuel use as we know it.
Nuno Loureiro, 47, was gunned down at his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline on Monday.
Authorities believe that the same alleged gunman, Claudio Neves Valente, who carried out the mass shooting at Brown University, may have assassinated Loureiro, but the investigation is still ongoing.
Before his death, Loureiro was leading MIT’s efforts to revolutionize energy production by making a game-changing clean power source that needs just a fraction of the fossil fuels current machines and vehicles use today.
His team’s research at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) centered on plasma physics, the study of super-hot, ionized gases, and how to apply them to fusion energy, a promising clean power source.
Fusion provides what scientists call ‘baseload electricity,’ a steady supply of power 24/7, using tiny amounts of fuel with no air pollution or climate-warming emissions, unlike carbon dioxide-producing fossil fuels.
A breakthrough in this field could disrupt the trillion-dollar fuel industry by reducing demand for oil, gas, and coal, especially for generating power and transportation. High-demand users like data centers could also switch to fusion for reliable, green energy.
‘This is a very advanced technology, and whatever nation masters it first is going to have an incredible advantage,’ Loureiro said on December 8.
Hellbound and Down 