A University of Cambridge scientist described as "inspiring" has died in the Spanish train collision on Wednesday that killed at least 69 people, because apparently the universe has no sense of proportionality.

Dr Marta Shahbazi was an affiliate associate professor at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and a group leader at the city's Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB). She was travelling on one of the trains involved in the crash near Urda in Toledo province.

In the grand tradition of recognition arriving at the worst possible moment, the LMB noted that the mother of two had recently won the Spanish Society of Developmental Biology's scientific excellence prize. She had been due to be presented with the award during its conference in El Rompido, Andalucía - a ceremony that will now be a memorial.

The LMB, in a LinkedIn post that no doubt required several attempts to write through the obvious grief, said it was deeply saddened by her death, which was "a profound shock and a huge loss." It added: "Martha was an inspiring, talented and passionate scientist whose research shed light on the earliest steps in the development of human embryos and how errors occur that lead to failed pregnancies."

The institute also noted she was a role model who had written eloquently about balancing her family and career, describing herself as a "mother scientist" - a term that manages to be both accurate and quietly radical in a field that still occasionally acts surprised when women have both children and publications.

Dr Roser Vento-Tormo, a group leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute outside Cambridge, wrote: "Marta Shahbazi was a beautiful person: a close collaborator, a treasured friend, and an inspiration to me both as a scientist and as a mother."

She continued, in the kind of tribute that makes clear the loss is not merely institutional: "As a scientist, we shared so many dreams. We co-supervised two students together, and I cannot describe how much joy it was to work alongside her. Some of our work will still be published in the coming months, and anyone who reads it will feel the passion she poured into everything she did … My thoughts are with her family. Anyone who knew Marta could see how deeply they were a unit, and how much they meant to her."

The Center for Research in Molecular Medicine and Chronic Diseases (CiMUS), based in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, paid tribute to Shahbazi as "a brilliant young researcher."

The disaster was Spain's second high-speed rail crash this year - both on the line between Madrid, the capital, and Seville in the Andalucía region. Three days of national mourning were observed from Thursday. The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, described the incident as a "tragedy" and has promised an investigation, which is the standard political response and, one hopes, not the only one.