Tehran University has formed two committees to investigate a deadly hydrogen cylinder blast at its engineering faculty laboratory that killed graduate student Mohammad Amin Kalateh, President Mohammad Hossein Omid said on Saturday.
Kalateh, a master’s student in metallurgy and materials engineering, died instantly in Thursday’s explosion, while two other students were injured and remain under treatment. A professor suffered minor injuries. The blast shattered windows and walls of the two-storey building, according to the fire department.
One committee will examine the cause of the incident and the second will review hazardous equipment across university laboratories. Omid said all labs with potentially dangerous devices had been temporarily suspended pending inspection. “Our labs are subject to regular technical inspections. The reason for this bitter incident must be clarified and reported,” he said.
Kalateh’s body was laid to rest Saturday in the Namavaran section of Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran after a funeral attended by students and officials. Science Minister Hossein Simayi called his death “an irreparable loss” in a message of condolence, and university leaders later visited the family’s home. Omid described Kalateh as a gifted and hardworking student preparing to defend his thesis.
The blast was not the first serious incident in an Iranian university laboratory. In 2023, a fire at Sharif University’s civil engineering faculty caused up to $10 million in damage, and in 2022 an accident at Tehran University’s Abureihan campus left a student and a lab technician with burns. Students at the time cited poor safety standards, while officials blamed human error.
