Kolanowska, 36, has been announced as one of five recipients of the 2021 Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the documentation of orchids in the biodiversity hotspots of the least explored regions of the world, including Andean Colombia and Papua New Guinea.
Kolanowska has discovered 370 species of orchids that were previously unknown to science.
She has taken part in more than 20 tropical expeditions to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Panama, and has done research in the botanical collections in the UK, Austria, the United States, Colombia, Panama and Mexico.
She is a member of the Polish Botanical Society, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, the Botanical Society of America, and the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.
Kolanowska studied and earned a PhD at the University of Gdańsk in northern Poland.
She is currently a professor at the Faculty of Biology and Environmental Protection at the University of Łódź, central Poland.
(mk/gs)