The UCLA professor who was shot and killed by a former doctoral student on campus Wednesday was described as a devout Christian and a brilliant man.
Willim Klug, 39, was gunned down by Mainak Sarkar before the latter killed himself in a murder-suicide at the UCLA Engineering building.
He was a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, the UCLA said, who conducted life-saving research.
After getting his master's degree in civil engineering at UCLA in 1999, he went to Caltech and earned his doctoral degree in 2003, later returning to UCLA to teach.
Colleague Alan Garfinkel, who worked with Klug for the past five years, described the slain professor as an "extremely sweet and kind person," according to The New York Times.
He said Klug was a devout Christian, adding that they would have debates about ethics and religion in front of students.
Klug graduated with a degree in engineering physics from Westmont College, a Christian liberal arts institution in California.
His wife, Mary Elise Klug, also graduated from Westmonth in 1997 with a degree in engineering physics.
A 2004 feature in Westmont Magazine said that attending Westmont gave Klug the chance to build more intellectual basis for his faith.
"My young, naive, and parent-based beliefs went through a transformation," he said. "I basically chucked everything I knew and began to think and reason carefully. Eventually I made my faith my own. I ended up where I had started, but with a much deeper understanding."
Klug said as a result, he had "learned to be more open minded, but not in a relativistic way."
"I intend to keep reevaluating my faith and to maintain a list of reasons for what I believe. I refuse to be afraid to evaluate new evidence," he said.
He added, "Knowing there is a God responsible for the world makes a big difference in my motivation to understand it better."
Klug said he relied on God for things that he could not control.
"I developed a habit of relying on God for what I felt was beyond my ability to control or what I couldn't do for myself. It helps me keep things in the right perspective," he said.
He was promoted as a full professor last year, according to UCLA.
"Our entire UCLA family is mourning the loss of Professor Klug, a respected, dedicated and caring faculty member," UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said.
Klug's recent research projects included collaborating with colleauges at the David Geffen School of Medicine in running the UCLA Cardiac Modeling Group in which harnesses biomechanics to better understand the electromechanics of the heart.
He was also the director of the Klug Research Group, which studied computational biomechanics, including how the shape and mechanics of biological structures affect their function.
He is survived by his wife and two children.
