Aerosol physicist Lidia Morawska wins 2025 Prime Minister's Prize for Science

She's an internationally renowned expert in the study of air quality and its impact on human health, and in 2021, was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.

Now, aerosol physicist and distinguished professor Lidia Morawska has won Australia's most coveted prize for scientific research.

On Monday night, Professor Morawska from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) was awarded the $250,000 Prime Minister's Prize for Science for pioneering research about the air we breathe and helping to safeguard public health and the environment.

"If you learn something as incredible as this, you initially understand the words … but it doesn't fully sink in," Professor Morawska, who learnt she'd won the award while waiting to board a flight in Canberra last month, said.

"It was that flight back [home] to Brisbane when this truly sank in that I won … something absolutely incredible."

Understanding impacts of ultrafine particles

Professor Morawska began her scientific career in Poland, where she was born.

"My first degree was in nuclear physics. That was my dream — to become a nuclear physicist," she said.

"But towards the end of [my first] degree, I developed an interest in something related but a bit different, which is environmental radioactivity."

After completing a PhD in the field of radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas, Professor Morawska spent four years working as a physics researcher in Canada, where she became fascinated by ultrafine particles.

Measuring about 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair, these tiny airborne pollutants are generated by things like vehicle traffic, industrial emissions and bushfires, and are small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream.

"One day, I took the probe of my instruments out the window of a busy Toronto street and to me that was — wow! A huge concentration of [ultrafine] particles were in the air," she said.

In 1991, Professor Morawska moved to Australia and joined QUT. The following year, she established the university's Environmental Aerosol Laboratory, now known as the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, where she remains director.

"That air quality can be detrimental to health was known [in the early 2000s], but investigations into the smallest fraction of these particles — ultrafine particles — hadn't been done at all," she said.

Over two decades, Professor Morawska and her colleagues' work on ultrafine particles has significantly improved global understanding of air pollution and its impacts on human health, and in 2021, led to changes to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines.

Scientific leadership during COVID

Professor Morawska's expertise became especially critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, and her leadership led to global recognition that the virus spreads mainly through the air.

Her work in previous years, including on the 2003 SARS pandemic, had "equipped [her] with an understanding of how respiratory infections are transmitted", including the key role of tiny, airborne particles.

"The problem was that within some areas of the medical community … that understanding wasn't there. They considered that respiratory infections are transmitted by very large particles that drop on surfaces," she said.

"It was absolutely clear to me and my colleagues that this is not the main pathway of transmission. But how do you fight against scientific dogma?"

To do it, she gathered nearly 240 scientists from around the world to raise awareness of the role of airborne COVID-19 transmission, which eventually prompted major changes to international health guidelines and infection control practices.

"Our open letter — after huge, huge obstacles — was published … the next day, the WHO accepted airborne pathway of infection transmission," Professor Morawska said.

According to Time Magazine: "Her advocacy helped change practices everywhere from schools to workplaces, making these environments safer for more people around the world."

When asked what she's most proud of, Professor Morawska said it was her team's moments of discovery, and above all, when their work had been "used to protect people".

But despite progress in our understanding and management of air pollution and ultrafine particles, Professor Morawska said there was still a long way to go.

"The reality is that there are no regulations for indoor air quality," she said.

"In a society like ours, more than 90 per cent of the time we are indoors, be at home, office, school … so it is indoor air which is the most important for our health.

"This is the problem right now — we must establish indoor air quality standards, and mandate those standards."

PM prizes recognise First Nations knowledge

In a first for the annual awards, there was a Prime Minister's Prize for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge Systems this year.

Malgana man Michael Wear was recognised for his work to establish an Indigenous-led sea cucumber fishery and seagrass restoration operation in Western Australia.

The professor of practice in Indigenous environmental conservation at Murdoch University said he was humbled to receive the prize.

"At the heart of it is that you know it gives another perspective, a viewpoint on how we view knowledge and how the systems are implemented," Professor Wear said.

"It's such a great honour to be selected … you take on responsibility to make sure you uphold it and you get more Aboriginal people involved to apply and highlight their work."

Professor Wear's business, Tidal Moon, was founded in World Heritage-listed Shark Bay (Gutharraguda) in 2017.

Its wild harvest of sea cucumbers by Aboriginal divers is a revival of an ancient trade once carried out between Australia and the Macassan seafaring people of Indonesia pre-European colonisation.

Professor Wear said it had been a personal goal to recreate the sea cucumber trade and bring it into a post-colonised world.

"They have no eyes, no fins, no feet, no predators, not many things eat them, and they have an important role.

"They cycle a lot of nutrients through the ocean."

Nurturing back seagrass meadows

By selling sea cucumbers into Asia, where they're a delicacy, Professor Wear hopes to generate enough funds at scale to pay for restoring seagrass meadows without needing to rely on grants.

About 1,000 square kilometres of seagrass was lost in a 2010–11 marine heatwave that devastated Shark Bay.

This was equivalent to about 20 per cent of the known meadows in the shallow bays, which underpin the coastal ecosystem as a nursery for fish and feeding ground for enigmatic creatures like dugongs.

Tidal Moon received a permit last year to start restoring meadows and the business aims to plant 100 hectares a year.

While collecting sea cucumbers and planting seagrass, Professor Wear wants to create a "living library" of marine observations by divers to enable further marine research.

"So you can go back 20 years from now and say 'On this date, this moon, this time we saw this' … and it may help someone in the future," he said.

Tidal Moon has several research collaborations and Professor Wear is also hopeful that biomedical benefits may be found in the venom of the sea cucumbers.

Other winners

The Prime Minister's Prize for Science and Prize for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge Systems were two of eight prizes awarded on Monday night. The four other science and innovation prizes and two science teaching prizes were awarded to:

• Vikram Sharma from QuintessenceLabs, who was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Innovation. Dr Sharma was recognised for translating deep Australian research in quantum science into world-leading cyber security solutions that are used by companies around the world to protect information. 
• David Khoury from the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney, who was awarded the Frank Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year. Dr Khoury was recognised for using applied mathematics to guide drug development for malaria and vaccine policies for COVID-19 and mpox.
• Yao Zheng from The University of Adelaide, who was awarded the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year. Professor Zheng was recognised for his research producing clean hydrogen directly from seawater, helping to accelerate Australia's green hydrogen industry in the transition to net zero.
• Nikhilesh Bappoo from WA medical technology company VeinTech, was awarded the Prize for New Innovators. Dr Bappoo was recognised for novel and accessible medical technologies, driven by his vision of a world where no life is lost because healthcare was too complex, too late or out of reach. 
• Paula Taylor from the ACT Education Directorate's Academy of Future Skills (co-located with Caroline Chisholm School) in Canberra, who was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools. Mrs Taylor was recognised for transforming STEM education in primary schools in the ACT.
• Matt Dodds, a physics and biology teacher from Glen Innes High School in New South Wales, who was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools. Mr Dodds was recognised for his creative teaching methods to equip students from rural areas and diverse backgrounds with the STEM knowledge and skills.