Lidia Morawska

Lidia Morawska (born 10 November 1952, Tarnów, Poland) is a Polish–Australian physicist, Australian Laureate Fellow and distinguished professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, at the Queensland University of Technology, director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (ILAQH) and ARC Training Centre for Advanced Building Systems Against Airborne Infection Transmission (Thrive) at QUT. She is past co-director of the Australia-China Centre for Air Quality Science and Management, an adjunct professor at the Jinan University in China, and a Vice-Chancellor fellow at the Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. Her work focuses on fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary field of air quality and its impact on human health, with a specific focus on atmospheric fine, ultrafine and nanoparticles. Since 2003, she expanded her interests to include also particles from human respiration activities and airborne infection transmission.

In 2018, she received the Eureka Prize for Infectious Diseases Research, as well as the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) 2017 David Sinclair Award. In 2020, she contributed to the area of airborne infection transmission of viruses, including COVID-19. In that same year she became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and received the QUT Distinguished Professorship, and received the 2021 International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate Special 2020 Award for an Extraordinary Academic Leadership. In 2021, she was included on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2024, she was elected as an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2025, she was awarded the Prime Minister Prize for Science by the Prime Minister of Australia The Hon Anthony Albanese MP, received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Lublin University of Technology, Poland for her global work in air quality research and its effects on human health and the environment, and was elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

Life and career She was born in 1952 in Tarnów to father Henryk Jaskuła, a yachtsman and sailing captain, and mother Zofia. At the age of two, she moved with her family to Przemyśl where she grew up. She studied physics and received her doctorate in 1982 at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland for research on radon and its progeny.

From 1982 to 1987, she was a research fellow at the Institute of Physics and Nuclear Techniques, Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, Cracow, Poland.

Prior to joining the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 1991, she conducted research first at McMaster University in Hamilton as a postdoctoral research fellow of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and later at the University of Toronto between 1987 and 1991.

She is a long-standing collaborator and advisor to the World Health Organization, contributing to all WHO air quality-related guidelines over the past two decades. She co-chairs the group responsible for the WHO Air Quality Guidelines, on which nations base their air quality standards.

In addition, was an Associate Editor of Science of the Total Environment journal, (2007-2021). Based on this work, the WHO and other national authorities such as the US Center for Disease Control, subsequently updated their advice regarding airborne transmission. In 2020, she became a Member of the Task Force on Workplace, School, and Travel Safety, The Lancet COVID Commission, looking into building-related risk factors which are a critical, but missing, component of SARS-CoV-2 outbreak investigations.

Ultrafine particle research Her "Ultrafine Particles from Traffic Emissions and Children's Health" project demonstrated that exposure to airborne ultrafine particles emitted in large quantities from vehicles was independently, positively associated with both systemic and respiratory inflammation and therefore has significant deleterious health impacts. In 2015, this evidence convinced the World Health Organization and individual countries to review national standards to protect children by controlling their exposure to ultrafine particles. As a result, they changed their air quality guidelines to include recommendations regarding ultrafine particles. In 2019, she led the "Thinking outside the box" team which prepared a White Paper titled "Ambient ultrafine particles: evidence for policy makers”, and in 2021, had input into the good practices for the management of ultrafine particles in the new WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines.

Global Burden of Diseases studies Since 2012, she has also contributed work on international scientific programs, such as the Global Burden of Disease studies which quantitatively assess the impact of exposure to air pollution as a disease risk.

Honours and awards Her scientific career has been recognised and awarded in multiple occasions by various organisations, among those are: 2026: ranked #4 in Australia, and #75 in the world in Research.com ’s Best Environmental Sciences Scientists . 2025: Prime Minister's Prize for Science 2025: Doctorate Honoris Causa from Lublin University of Technology, Poland 2025: President’s Prize, Australian Institute of Architects 2024: Planetary Health Award, The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation 2024: Forbes Polish Women Magazine list of 50 women over 50 2024: named in the ABC The Science Show’s Top 100 Australian Scientists . 2023: L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards (Laureate for Asia and the Pacific – Earth and environmental science) 2023: Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture awarded by the Australian Academy of Science 2023: Lung Health Legends Award, Lung Foundation Australia 2022: American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) Susanne V. Herring Award 2021: Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the Innovators category 2021: ISIAQ Special 2020 Award for an Extraordinary Academic Leadership, International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate 2021: Honorary Fellow, Clean Air Society of Australia and New Zealand 2021: Researcher of the Year, Faculty of Science 2021 Dean’s Outstanding Achievement Award, QUT 2020: QUT Vice-Chancellors' Award for Leadership Excellence, QUT Recognition Program 2020: Ranked 16,428 in the list of the 100,000 best scientists in the world according to the Stanford University 2020: Recognition by The Sydney Morning Herald as one of the best scientists in the area of health and science 2020: Nominee in the list of the Top 40 Australian scientists by the Australian Research Magazine 2020: Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science 2018: Eureka Prize for Infectious Diseases Research by the Australian Museum of Eureka Prizes 2017: David Sinclair Award by the American Association for Aerosol Research

Selected works She is credited with more than 950 academic publications, including scientific articles, book chapters, and conference papers. Among the most cited publications are:

Selected publications on Covid-19:

Lidia Morawska, et al., “ Mandating indoor air quality for public buildings ”. Science, 383(6690): 1418–1420, 2024 Lidia Morawska, et al., "A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection". Science, 372(6543): 689–691, 2021. Lidia Morawska and Donald Milton, "It is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of COVID-19". Clinical Infectious Diseases, 71(9): 2311-2313, 2020. Lidia Morawska, et al., Morawska et al., "How can airborne transmission of COVID-19 indoors be minimised?" Environ. Int., 142:105832, 2020.