Australian IAQ legend elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska, a world-leading indoor air quality expert from Queensland University of Technology, has been elected as a member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is one of 25 new international honorary members among the 250 new members appointed this year to the academy, which was founded in 1780.

Morawska recently led a group of international experts who presented a blueprint for national indoor air quality standards for public buildings.

In 2021, Professor Morawska was named in the 2021 TIME100 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world for her leading role in alerting the global community to the aerosolisation of the COVID-19 virus as a means of indoor spread.

Her many previous accolades include receiving the prestigious 2023 L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Laureate for Asia and the Pacific.

Morawska says she is surprised and honoured by the announcement.

“It is an incredible honour to be elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and be counted among the giants of mind and progress,” Morawska says.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read the letter from the Academy that this honour had been granted to me.”

The academy’s charter is “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people”.

The earliest members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences include Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and Alexander Graham Bell. Other more recent distinguished members include John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Nelson Mandela.