Professor Lidia Morawska (Past ISIAQ President)

Lidia Morawska is a Professor at the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia, and the Director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (ILAQH) at QUT, which is a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization on Research and Training in the field of Global Burden of Disease due to Air Pollution. She conducts fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary field of air quality and its impact on human health and the environment, with a specific focus on science of airborne particulate matter. Professor Morawska is a physicist and received her doctorate at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland for research on radon and its progeny.

Prior to joining QUT she spent several years in Canada conducting research first at McMaster University in Hamilton as a Fellow of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and later at the University of Toronto. Professor Morawska is an author of over two hundred and fifty journal papers, book chapters and refereed conference papers. She has been involved at the executive level with a number of relevant national and international professional bodies and has been acting as an advisor to the World Health Organization. She is a past President of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate.

Lidia Morawska has already had extensive experience organising large international scientific events. She has served on the ‘International Scientific/Advisory Committee’ for over 25 international conferences since 1993 (including all of the Indoor Air Conferences since 1996), and she was also the ‘International Co-ordinator’ for 4 previous ‘Healthy Buildings’ conferences (Milan, Italy 1995; Helsinki, Finland 2000; Singapore 2003 and Lisbon, Portugal 2006).

Of particular significance was the organisation and chairing of the International Workshop: Indoor Air – An Integrated Approach, held at the Gold Coast in 1994. Professor Morawska’s submission not only gained the support of the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Commission of the European Communities, ISIAQ and the World Health Organisation, but the resulting conference was also highly assessed by the sponsoring and hosting organisations, as well as the participants. The workshop attracted close to 200 participants from twenty countries, a significant number of them leading international experts in these areas. Recommendations for research, health risk assessment and management strategies resulting from the workshop were published in a book entitled ‘Indoor Air – An Integrated Approach’, by the UK based Elsevier Science Limited, for which Professor Morawska was the principal editor of the book.

Professor Morawska will be the President of the conference and she will be working with a team of two organising/advisory committees, as well as professional conference organisers from QUT. The event has the full support of the University, including the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST), and the Institute for Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI) at QUT.