Shahbazi boarded the front section of carriage 8 on Wednesday, 28 October, for a journey to El Rompido in Huelva, where she was due to receive an award for scientific excellence. The 41-year-old biologist died in the collision between two high-speed trains near Urda, in Toledo province, shortly before 9 a.m. Spanish time. The crash killed 69 people, the BBC reported. The Ayuntamiento de Carrizo de la Ribera confirmed Shahbazi’s death in a statement published on Sunday, 1 November. Her brother, physicist Carlos Shahbazi, had told El País that she was missing after the trains collided.
Born in León, Shahbazi led a research group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge and was an affiliate associate professor at the University of Cambridge’s Stem Cell Institute. Her team studied the earliest stages of human fertilisation, including how the single cell formed by an egg and a sperm begins to divide and develop, as well as biological processes linked to failed pregnancies. Scientists at the laboratory have won a dozen Nobel Prizes. The LMB described Shahbazi as an inspiring and passionate scientist whose research examined the earliest stages of human-embryo development.
Shahbazi studied biology at the Autonomous University of Madrid before completing a master’s degree in molecular biomedicine and doctoral research at Spain’s National Cancer Research Centre. She joined the University of Cambridge as a postdoctoral fellow in 2014 and became an LMB group leader in 2020. In 2019, she received the 3Rs Prize for work that created an opportunity to replace and reduce the use of mice in developmental-biology studies.
The council said Shahbazi had close family ties to Carrizo de la Ribera through her mother, who was from the town. In its statement, published on social media, it remembered her work on human embryonic development and expressed condolences to her husband and children, as well as her parents and wider family.
She was travelling to collect the award from the Sociedad Española de Biología del Desarrollo, the Spanish Society for Developmental Biology.
