Colleagues pay tribute to Cambridge scientist, 41, who was killed in a Spanish train crash en route to an award
Wrecked carriages thrown down an embankment near Urda, Toledo, after controllers directed a Renfe train to resume at full speed into a stationary Iryo service carrying 147 passengers.Dr Marta Shahbazi, the Cambridge biologist confirmed among the 69 killed, had been travelling to receive an award from the Spanish Society for Developmental Biology when the crash occurred on Wednesday.
Dr Marta Shahbazi, a 41-year-old mother of two, was riding in the front carriage of the Renfe AVE service when it collided with a stationary Iryo train near Urda, Toledo on Wednesday, leaving at least 69 people dead. Her brother Carlos said: 'She lived for science and her kids — that was her whole life.' Investigators have identified up to four system failures in a crash that witnesses described as looking 'as if a bomb had been planted.'
Shahbazi had just won the Spanish Society for Developmental Biology's prize for scientific excellence and was en route to collect it at a conference in El Rompido, Andalusia.
She led the Shahbazi Laboratory at Cambridge's MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and held an affiliate associate professorship at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, focusing on early embryo development and pregnancy failure.
Her two children are aged three and seven; colleagues said her research 'had the potential to save countless lives' and she had written eloquently about being a 'mother scientist.'
