Cambridge Scientist Marta Shahbazi Killed in Spanish Train Crash
Award‑winning Cambridge researcher died en route to receive a Spanish developmental biology prize.
What a tragic loss for science!
Dr Marta Shahbazi, an award‑winning University of Cambridge researcher, died on Wednesday when the train she was travelling on collided with another near Urda, south of Madrid, killing 69 people.
Shahbazi was an affiliate associate professor leading a group of researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. She also served as an affiliate principal investigator and affiliate assistant professor at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute.
The LMB described her as an “inspiring, talented and passionate scientist” and said her death was “a profound shock and a huge loss”.
She headed the Shahbazi Laboratory at the LMB, where her work illuminated the earliest steps of human embryo development and the errors that can cause failed pregnancies.
Shahbazi had been announced as the winner of a Spanish Society for Developmental Biology award for her contributions to early human development and was due to collect the prize at a conference in El Rompido, Andalusia.
According to the institute, she was a mother of two and often wrote about balancing family and career, describing herself as a “mother scientist”.
Institute director Prof Bertie Gottgens said the community was “shocked and deeply saddened” by her death.
Shahbazi joined the Cambridge laboratory in 2020 and had received many awards and prizes for her research.
Her passing adds to the sorrow of the train disaster that claimed dozens of lives.
