Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente and slain MIT professor Nuno Loureiro reportedly went to same Portuguese engineering school

The Brown University mass shooting suspect is believed to be responsible for the recent killing of an MIT professor, the authorities have confirmed. 

Leah Foley, the US attorney for the District of Massachusetts, announced in a Thursday, December 18, press conference that Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente was connected to both incidents.

She further confirmed that the suspect, a former Brown University student, was reportedly a classmate of the deceased MIT professor, Nuno Loureiro. 

Foley shared that Loureiro and Neves-Valente were enrolled in the same academic program in Portugal between 1995 and 2000.

When a journalist asked whether they knew each other, the Mass US attorney replied:

“My understanding is that they did know each other.” 

Foley denied having any information about the late MIT professor being in communication with the shooting suspect. She added: 

“We're still investigating the motive in this case and trying to… Because like I said, he [Neves-Valente] was very careful in his communications and we just don't have any information right now to answer that question. But when we get that information, we will share it.” 

According to MIT's media release on Nuno Loureiro’s death, the plasma physicist attended Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal. It was the same engineering school that the suspect reportedly attended during the 1990s.

Loureiro earned an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Lisbon. 

He went to undergrad in Portugal with the MIT professor pic.twitter.com/dvnRlvfGkG

— j 🇨🇴 (@javimelon14) December 19, 2025

He also attended Imperial College London to pursue a PhD. He later served as a researcher at various organizations and institutions before joining MIT as a professor and fusion scientist in 2016.

Loureiro was appointed as the director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center in 2024. He held the position until his death in December 2025. 

Financial investigations linked the Brown University mass shooting to the killing of an MIT professor

The authorities discovered Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente dead at a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.

The law enforcement agencies were tracking the suspect based on a court-issued arrest warrant with charges including two counts of murder and 23 felony assault and firearms offenses. 

The Brown University mass shooting had happened on December 13 and resulted in the deaths of two students – Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, – and multiple injured victims. The MIT professor was fatally shot at his Brookline, Massachusetts, residence on December 15.

The authorities found a connection between the incidents, based on the financial investigations, Foley confirmed on Thursday.

The suspect in the Brown University shooting reportedly rented a vehicle in Boston, which was driven to Providence, Rhode Island. Foley revealed that the authorities also identified the suspect through security footage in both cases. She stated: 

“There were financial investigations that were going on in the background that linked him not only to that car but also to the hotels that he had rented and the cars that he had used to not only drive to Rhode Island but then back to Boston. And then there was the security footage that captured him within a half mile of the professor's residence in Brookline.” 

Foley revealed: 

“There is video footage of him entering an apartment building in the location of the professor's apartment. And then later that evening, he is seen about an hour later entering the storage unit wearing the same clothes that he had been seen wearing right after the murder.” 

Leah Foley highlighted the investigative findings to assert that Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente was believed to be the suspect in both cases. 

Apart from his connection to the MIT professor, Neves-Valente was also linked to Brown University.

He enrolled in a doctoral program at the institution in 2000 as an F-1 student, but later withdrew from it. Neves-Valente also became a permanent resident of the US in April 2017.