Dr. Danuta (Danka) Pieniazek, 79, of Parrish, FL, passed away peacefully on July 11, 2025, after a long illness.
Her husband of 55 years, Norman J. Pieniazek of Parrish, FL, will dearly miss her, as will her sister, Jolanta (Jola) Kucharek, and her two Nieces, Maria and Julia, as well as her two Nephews, Maciej and Maksymilian.
She was born on January 19, 1946, in Otwock, a southeastern suburb of Warsaw, Poland. After moving with her family to Warsaw in 1962, she enrolled in the Faculty of Biology at Warsaw University in 1964 and graduated in June 1969 with a master's degree in Genetics. A few months later, in November 1969, she married Norman J. Pieniazek, her college sweetheart. Her first job as a researcher was at the Institute for Food and Nutrition in Warsaw, where she conducted work that was presented in 1974 at the prestigious Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and subsequently earned her a PhD in Physiology.
From 1974 to 1975, she began working at the Max-Planck-Institut für experimentelle Medizin in Göttingen, West Germany, on fungal mitochondrial proteins. Returning to Poland, she worked as a virologist at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, moving in 1977 to the newly established Children's Memorial Health Institute as the Head of the Laboratory of Inborn Errors of Metabolism. She received additional training at the Hospital for Sick Children in London, England.
In September 1985, she moved to Seville, Spain, where her husband was a visiting professor of molecular genetics. A year later, she moved again, this time to New Orleans, LA, where she and her husband were visiting professors at the LSU Medical Center, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Parasitology. Many researchers continue to cite her pioneering work on human adenoviruses 40 and 41.
A new chapter in her life opened in 1989, when she was hired by a newly organized CDC Division of HIV/AIDS. She had an outstanding career first as a molecular epidemiologist and then as an epidemiologist. She published 91 scientific papers that 5,028 other researchers cited. Her H-index is a respectable 38.
She retired in 2012. Her favorite hobbies were traveling, gardening, and cats.
A memorial service for Danka will be held at the Incarnation Parish Main Church, 2901 Bee Ridge Rd, Sarasota, FL 34239, on Saturday, July 26, at 10:00 a.m. Immediately after the service, a reception will follow at the Church Hall (not the Parish Hall). Homemade Polish food will be served.
