Lidia Morawska (born 10 November[citation needed] 1952, Tarnów, Poland) is a
Polish–Australian[2] physicist and distinguished professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, at the
Queensland University of Technology and director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (ILAQH) at QUT. She is also 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.[3] 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.
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.[1] She studied physics and received her doctorate in 1982 at the
Jagiellonian University,
Kraków, Poland for research on
radon and its progeny.[10]
From 1982 to 1987, she was a research fellow at the Institute of Physics and Nuclear Techniques, Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, Cracow, Poland.
She has conducted research in this field since 1991, when she established the Environmental Aerosol Laboratory at QUT, renamed the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health in 2002. She subsequently assumed a position as associate professor at the QUT in 2003.[11]
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.[12]
In addition, she is Associate Editor of Science of the Total Environment journal, and in 2020.[12]
Research
Her research interests and scientific contributions fall into eight main areas: (i) Instrumental techniques for ultrafine particle detection in the air; (ii) Combustion as a source of urban atmospheric pollution; (iii) The science of ambient particle dynamics; (iv) Indoor Air Quality; (v) Lung Deposition; (vi) Risk assessment and mitigation; (vii) Developing and utilising advanced networks for air quality sensing and analyses; and (viii) particles from respiratory activities and infection control.
She has received funding from different sources and for different research projects including:
Funding for research projects
Year
Project
Funding
2020
"The Air is Fair, Here and There": Queensland Communities Assessing and Comparing Air Quality
Queensland Citizen Science
2019
Overcoming cultural and developmental barriers to transition towards cleaner energy practices in Oceania: A pilot study in Solomon Islands
NHMRC CAR Seed Funding
2019
Airborne ultrafine particles in Australian cities
ARC Linkage Projects
2018
Assessment of children's exposure to air pollution in Fiji, its drivers and the burden of disease attributable to it
NHMRC CAR Seed Funding
2017
Establishing Advanced Networks for Air Quality Sensing and Analyses
ARC Linkage Projects
2012
The Effects of Nano and Ultrafine Particles from Traffic Emissions on Children s Health (UPTECH)
ARC Linkage Projects
COVID-19 research
During the
COVID-19 pandemic, she assembled and led a multidisciplinary group of 239 scientists guiding public health authorities worldwide to recognise the significance of airborne transmission of
SARS-CoV-2 virus-laden particles and the risk it poses to human health.[13] 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.[14]
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.[15]
Honours and awards
Her scientific career has been recognised and awarded in multiple occasions by various organisations, among those are:[5][16]
She is credited with more than 950 academic publications, including scientific articles, book chapters, and conference papers. Among the most cited publications are:[27]