The American Physical Society awarded former NSCL graduate student Ania Kwiatkowski with the 2018 Stuart Jay Freedman Award in Experimental Nuclear Physics. The award recognizes outstanding early career experimentalists in nuclear physics. Kwiatkowski received this award for “outstanding and innovative contributions to precision mass measurements, commitment to mentoring of young researchers, and leadership in the low energy nuclear physics community.”

Kwiatkowski received her PhD from MSU in 2011 for her research at NSCL under the supervision of Professor Georg Bollen, FRIB Experimental Systems Division director. As a graduate student at MSU, Kwiatkowski brought students together to engage them in activities such as the Women and Minorities in the Physical Sciences program.

Kwiatkowski continued her career as a postdoctoral researcher at TRIUMF, Canada's national particle accelerator center, at its TITAN ion trap facility. She then accepted an assistant professorship position at Texas A&M. Kwiatkowski returned to TRIUMF as a staff physicist and adjunct faculty at the University of Victoria to lead the TITAN program.