Louis Ngoc-Duy Nguyen, a 27-year-old neurosciences graduate student, died early Tuesday, March 29, in a case presumed to be suicide. UCSD released a statement on same day.
“UC San Diego Police and the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office on Tuesday are investigating a suspected suicide at a university research building,” the statement read. “[He] was found dead by paramedics at 3:48 a.m. Tuesday in his office at the Center for Neural Circuits and Behavior. The investigation is pending results of an autopsy.”
The case is still under investigation, but the autopsy has been completed by the San Diego Medical Examiner’s Office.
“Time of death was 3:40 a.m.” a private investigator said. “The cause of death is pending further studies.”
No additional statements were released by UCSD officials.
Nguyen graduated from UCSD in 2004 with a B.S. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology. He worked in professor Roberto Malinow’s lab, which studies diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and depression.
Nguyen co-authored four articles for journals such as Nature and Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience and served as a co-editor-in-chief of the first volume of Saltman Quarterly, the undergraduate biology research journal. In 2002, he received a UCSD’s Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Grant and a Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research Scholarship.
Nguyen is from San Diego. He is survived by parent Giao Anh Nguyen.
The neurosciences department could not be reached for comment.