Awards

Inaugurated in 1995 to honor distinguished scholars and scientists for their scholarly achievements.

AWARDS

About Our Awards

The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA) is a prestigious Polish-American academic institution based in New York, founded in 1942. One of its main goals is to promote knowledge about Poland and Polish culture in the United States and to integrate the academic community.

The Institute regularly grants awards to honor outstanding scientists, researchers, and creators (mainly of Polish descent or those dealing with Polish affairs).

Exact and Applied Sciences

Tadeusz Sendzimir Applied Sciences Award – honors engineers and scientists of Polish descent for outstanding achievements in fields such as computer science, materials science, or artificial intelligence.
Casimir Funk Natural Sciences Award – granted to researchers for their outstanding contribution to the development of natural sciences, medicine, or biology.

Humanities, Social Sciences, and History

Oskar Halecki Polish History Award – an award for the most valuable book publications concerning the history of Poland.
Bronisław Malinowski Award in the Social Sciences – granted to scholars for outstanding books and works in the fields of sociology, anthropology, or political science.
Wacław Lednicki Humanities Award – honors important literary studies, humanistic works, and essays.

Other Recognitions

Ludwik Krzyżanowski Polish Review Award – granted for the best article published in the quarterly “The Polish Review” (the official journal of PIASA).
Lifetime and Merit Awards (e.g., Distinguished Achievement Award, Susanne Lotarski Distinguished Achievement Award) – presented for outstanding lifetime achievements in the field of Polish studies or for direct services to the Institute.
Karol Pilarczyk Foundation Award – a special distinction granted for activities supporting democracy, independent journalism, and the rule of law.

PIASA Award

Award Recipients

The laureates of the 2025 PIASA Awards

The Casimir Funk Award in the Natural Sciences: Dr. Krzysztof Górski, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, Pasadena (retired), and Secretary General, Nicholaus Copernicus Academy, Warsaw.
The Tadeusz Sendzimir Award in the Applied Sciences: Dr. Teresa J. Bandosz, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, The City College of New York.
The Karol Pilarczyk Foundation Award to Promote Democracy and the Rule of Law: Ms.Anna Husarska, writer, journalist and activist, and Leszek Jażdżewski, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, “Liberté!” (co-recipients).
The Ludwik Krzyżanowski Polish Review Best Article Award: Dr. Colin P. Neufeldt, Concordia University of Edmonton and Dr. Wojciech Marchlewski, the Mazovian Museum in Płock, for “Escape to Freedom and Return to Bondage: A Case Study of the Flight of Mennonites from Deutsch Wymyschle and Gąbin, Poland, in Early 1945” published in The Polish Review Vol. 69, No.3, 2024. Honorable Mention: Dr. Andrzej Pieczewski, University of Łódź, and Dr. Aliaksandra Sidarava, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, for “The Polish Diaspora in Belarus: Functioning under the Lukashenko Regime,” published in The Polish Review, Vol. 69, no. 3 (2024).
The Oskar Halecki Polish and East-Central European History Award: Dr. Jacob Flaws, Kean University, for Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2024).
The Bronisław Malinowski Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka, University of Montreal, for Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024).
The Wacław Lednicki Award in the Humanities: Dr. Anna Parkitna, Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, for Opera in Warsaw: A City of the European Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024). Honorable Mentions: Dr. Elżbieta Ostrowska, University of Łódż, for ReFocus: The Films of Agnieszka Holland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024) and Dr. Karen Underhill, University of Illinois, Chicago, for Bruno Schulz and Galician Jewish Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2024).
The Rachel Feldhay Brenner Award in Polish-Jewish Studies: Dr. Waitman Wade Beorn, Northumbria University, for Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2024).
The Susanne M. Lotarski Distinguished Achievement Award: Dr. Jan Tomasz Gross, The Norman B. Tomlinson Professor of War and Society (Emeritus), Department of History, Princeton University.

Distinguished

Awardees

We are deeply honored to present our distinguished past laureates. Over the years, these exceptional individuals have been recognized for their outstanding contributions and unwavering dedication. Below is a list of our previous award recipients, categorized by the specific honors they have received.

1995 – Dr. Andrzej S. Kaminski, Georgetown University
1996 – Dr. Robert Blobaum, University of West Virginia
1997 – Dr. Piotr S. Wandycz, Yale University
1998 – Dr. Timothy Snyder, Harvard University
2001 – Dr. Brian Allen Porter, University of Michigan
2003 – Dr. Daniel Stone, University of Winnipeg
2005 – Dr. Gershon David Hundert, McGill University
2007 – Dr. Marci Shore, Yale University
2014 – Dr. M.B.B. Biskupski, Central Connecticut State University
2014 – Dr. James Pula, Purdue University – North Central
2017 – Dr. Keely Stauter-Halsted, University of Illinois-Chicago
2018 – Dr. Paul Knoll, University of Southern California
2019 – Dr. Anna Műller, University of Michigan-Dearborn
2020 – Dr. Dominic A. Pacyga, Columbia College (Chicago)
2021 – Dr. Molly Pucci, Assistant Professor of Twentieth-Century European History, Trinity College Dublin and Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski, Professor of Polish-Lithuanian History, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London
2022 – Dr. Kenneth B Moss, the University of Chicago Honorable Mention: Dr. Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, Jagiellonian University
2023 – Dr. Małgorzata Fidelis, University of Illinois Honorable Mention: Dr. Kyrill Kunakhovich, University of Virginia.
2024 – Tomasz Grusiecki, Boise State University.
2025 – Dr. Jacob Flaws, Kean University, for Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2024).

1995 – Dr. Roald Hoffmann, Cornell University
1996 – Dr. Alexander Wolszczan, Pennsylvania State University
1997 – Dr. Hilary Koprowski, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia
1998 – Dr. Peter T. Wolczanski, Cornell University
2001 – Dr. Andrew Wojcicki, Ohio State University
2003 – Dr. Waclaw Szybalski, McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2005 – Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot, Yale University
2008 – Dr. Frank Wilczek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2013 – Dr. Maria Siemionow, Cleveland Clinic
2014 – Dr. Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz, New York Medical College
2016 – Prof. Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, Carnegie Mellon University
2017 – Dr. Andrew V. Schally, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, University of Miami
2018 – Dr. Krzysztof Palczewski, University of California-Irviine
2019 – Dr. Jack W. Szostak, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital
2020 – Dr. Henryk Iwaniec, Rutgers University
2021 – Witold Nazarewicz, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor and Chief Scientific Officer for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Michigan State University
2022 – Dr. Thomas Wisniewski, New York University School of Medicine, and Director of NYU’s Alzheimer Disease Center
2023 – Dr. Alex Wlodawer, National Institutes of Health
2024 – Dr. Piotr Chomczyński, Founder and Director of the Molecular Research Center, Cincinnati.
2025 – Dr. Krzysztof Górski, Secretary General, Nicholaus Copernicus Academy, Warsaw.

1995 – Dr. Helena Znaniecka Lopata, Loyola University, Chicago
1995 – Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center for Strategic & International Studies
1997 – Dr. Adam Podgorecki, Carleton University & University of Warsaw
1998 – Eva Hoffman, author
2001 – Dr. Grzegorz Ekiert, Harvard University and Dr. Jan Kubik, Rutgers University.
2007 – Dr. Michael Bernhard, Pennsylvania State University
2017 – Dr. Marysia H. Galbraith, University of Alabama
2018 – Dr. Evgeny Finkel, Johns Hopkins University
2019 – Dr. Jeffrey S. Kopstein, University of California-Irvine and Dr. Jason Wittenberg, University of California-Berkeley
2020 – Dr. Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University
2021 – Geneviève Zubrzycki, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, the Center for European Studies, and the Copernicus Program in Polish Studies, University of Michigan
2022 – Dr. Agnieszka Graff, University of Warsaw, and Dr. Elżbieta Korolczuk, Södertörn University (Stockholm) and University of Warsaw
2023 – Dr. Tomasz Zarycki, University of Warsaw
2024 – Magdalena Waligórska, Humboldt University, Berlin Honorable Mention: Jack Palmer, University of Leeds.
2025 – Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka, University of Montreal, for Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024).

1996 – Dr. Tomas A. Venclova, Yale University
1998 – Dr. Beth C. Holmgren, University of North Carolina
2001 – Dr. Jan C. Cavanaugh, Seattle, Washington
2003 – Dr. Roman Koropeckyj, UCLA
2005 – Dr. Karen Majewski, Polish American Historical Association (PAHA), Orchard Lake Schools, Orchard Lake, Michigan
2007 – Dr. Marek Bartelik, Cooper Union, New York
2014 – Adrian Prawica, director and filmmaker, Chicago, Illinois
2017 – Dr. Ursula Phillips, University College London
2018 – Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, author and translator, Boston, Massachusetts
2019 – Dr. Marek Haltof, Northern Michigan University
2020 – Dr. Grażyna J. Kozaczka, Cazenovia College
2022 – Dr. Katarzyna Bartoszynska, Ithaca College Honorable Mention: Dr. Aleksandra Kremer, Harvard University
2024 – Agata Łuksza, Warsaw University Honorable Mention: Sławomir Dobrzański, Kansas State University
2025 – r. Anna Parkitna, Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, for Opera in Warsaw: A City of the European Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024). Honorable Mentions: Dr. Elżbieta Ostrowska, University of Łódż, for ReFocus: The Films of Agnieszka Holland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024) and Dr. Karen Underhill, University of Illinois, Chicago, for Bruno Schulz and Galician Jewish Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2024).

996 – Dr. Stanislaw Mrozowski, Professor Emeritus, SUNY at Buffalo
1997 – Dr. Stanislaw Gorczyca, Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, Krakow
1998 – Dr. Thaddeus B. Massalski, Carnegie Mellon University
2001 – Dr. Wladyslaw Koleczko, President of the Polish Association of Inventors and Industrial Innovators in Warsaw
2017 – Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe, Los Altos Hills, California
2018 – Dr. Tomasz Imielinski, Rutgers University
2019 – Halina Zyczynski, MD, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
2020 – Dr. Władek Minor, University of Virginia and Dr. Zbyszek Otwinowski, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas
2021 – Witold F. Krajewski, Rose and Joseph Summers Chair in Water Research Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa
2022 – Dr. Marcin Żukowski, co-founder and vice president of engineering at Snowflake Computing
2023 – Dr. Tomasz Wierzbicki, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
2024 – Dr. Wojciech Zaremba, Co-founder and Robotics Research Manager, OpenAI.
2025 – Dr. Teresa J. Bandosz, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, The City College of New York.

1995 – Dr. Andrzej Chmielarz, Institute of Military History, Warsaw
2015 – Dr. Robert Blobaum, West Virginia University
2017 – Dr. Rafal Wnuk, Catholic University of Lublin, and Dr. Piotr M. Majewski, Warsaw University
2018 – Dr. Adam Chmielewski, University of Wrocław
2019 – Dr. Christopher Garbowski, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin
2020 – Dr. Anna Krakus, University of Copenhagen
2021 – Dr. Anna Muller, University of Michigan-Dearborn
2022 – Dr. Dariusz Stola, Polish Academy of Sciences
2023 – Dr. Vitalii Borymskyi, Institute of History of Ukraine, Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences
2024 – Dr. Dariusz Libionka, Polish Academy of Sciences
2025 – Dr. Colin P. Neufeldt, Concordia University of Edmonton and Dr. Wojciech Marchlewski, the Mazovian Museum in Płock, for “Escape to Freedom and Return to Bondage: A Case Study of the Flight of Mennonites from Deutsch Wymyschle and Gąbin, Poland, in Early 1945” published in The Polish Review Vol. 69, No.3, 2024. Honorable Mention: Dr. Andrzej Pieczewski, University of Łódź, and Dr. Aliaksandra Sidarava, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, for “The Polish Diaspora in Belarus: Functioning under the Lukashenko Regime,” published in The Polish Review, Vol. 69, no. 3 (2024)

2007 – Dr. Anna M. Cienciala, University of Kansas
2014 – Dr. Paul Knoll, University of Southern California
2018 – Dr. Jan Kubik, Rutgers University
2019 – Dr. Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University

2020 – Dr. Anna Frajlich-Zając, Columbia University
2021 – Roman Koropeckyj, Professor of Slavic Languages, Department of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles
2022 – Dr. Irena Grudzińska Gross, Professor, Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Madeline G. Levine, Kenan Professor of Slavic Literatures Emerita, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
2023 – Dr. Larry Wolff, New York University
2024 – Joanna Rostropowicz Clark, Princeton Research Forum, and Krzysztof Jasiewicz, Washington and Lee University.
2025 – Dr. Jan Tomasz Gross, The Norman B. Tomlinson Professor of War and Society (Emeritus), Department of History, Princeton University.

2021 – Dr. Eliyana Adler, Pennsylvania State University
2022 – Dr. Alina Molisak, Warsaw University Honorable Mention: Dr. Jan Rybak, Central European University
2023 – Dr. Yechiel Weizman, Bar-Ilan University and Dr. Geneviève Zubrzycki, University of Michigan
2024 – Janine Holc, Loyola University of Maryland
2025 – Dr. Waitman Wade Beorn, Northumbria University, for Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2024).

2021 – Dr. Silvia Dapia, City University of New York
2022 – Dr. Katharina Friedla, Hoover Institution Stanford and Dr. Markus Nesselrodt, Europe-Universität Viadrina
2023 – Dr. Irena Grudzińska Gross and Dr. Konrad Matyjaszek, both from the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences Honorable Mention: Dr. Katarzyna Fazan, Jagiellonian University, Dr. Michal Kobialka, University of Minnesota, and Dr. Bryce Lease, Royal Holloway, University of London.
2024 – Halina Goldberg, Indiana University, and Nancy Sinkoff, Rutgers University Honorable Mention: Stanley Bill, Cambridge University, and Simon Lewis, University of Bremen.

2023 – Marta Gorczynska, human rights lawyer and co-founder of the NGO Grupa Granica (The Border Group), and head of the Migration Department at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Warsaw.
2023 – Agnieszka Holland, filmmaker, and Wojciech Sadurski, University of Sydney.
2024 –The Team of Journalists at OKO Press, Warsaw.
2025 – Ms.Anna Husarska, writer, journalist and activist, and Leszek Jażdżewski, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, “Liberté!” (co-recipients).