Dr. Shahbazov is the inaugural chief of the Division of Transplant Surgery at Albany Medical Center, and the Neil Lempert Endowed Chair in the Department of Surgery.

He completed a fellowship in transplant surgery at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Va., a transplant research fellowship at Baylor Transplant Institute in Dallas, and a transplant surgery fellowship at Baskent University in Ankara, Turkey. He completed general surgery residencies at King Faisal Hospital in Al-Taif, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Clinical Hospital #5 in Baku, Azerbaijan. He received his medical degree from Azerbaijan Medical University, also in Baku.

Dr. Shahbazov is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and European Board of Surgery as well as a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and the American Medical Association. He has authored or co-authored dozens of publications in professional journals and authored a chapter on Living Donor Liver Transplantation in the book Transplantation Surgery. He is fluent in English, Azerbaijani, Russian, and Turkish, and is proficient in Arabic.