Inspired by those who cared for her, she became a nurse.

Then, seeing the pressure placed on health workers, she became a researcher and educator determined to put care and compassion at the heart of training nurses.

"Her biggest goal was to create better nurses," her husband, Ben Livingstone said.

Described by her loved ones as a shiny star - and ball of fun - the University of Wollongong student died in January, part way through her PhD where she was looking at ways to do just that.

This week, Ben and their 11-year-old daughter Grace accepted her posthumous degree at the UOW graduation ceremonies, in recognition of the work and publications she completed while she was alive.

"Getting this certificate on her behalf, I'm just so proud of her," Mr Livingstone said.

"And Grace already knows that she was the best mum of all time, but this will show the academic and educator and the professional nurse side of her mother, and later on in life she'll be able to look back on it."

He said Dr Livingstone's lifelong illness, which led to her having a double lung transplant in her early 30s, had given her a mission to tackle everything in life "full on".

"She was diagnosed with CF when she was 12 months old and her dad helped instill a mantra where she just tried anything and everything," Mr Livingstone said.

"She had a hand and foot in just about any sport that was going on, and he really encouraged her not to let it hold her back, which she never did.

"Having CF, and spending lots of time in and out of hospital, gave her a unique perspective going into being a nurse. She could see what she felt she was probably lacking as a patient, and she could see where there were improvements to be made, and how hard the nurses work."

In another recognition of her research, this week Dr Livingstone had a paper about her work posthumously published in a prestigious nursing education journal.

Before her death, she wrote an acknowledgement as part of the article, saying she hoped that the impact of her work would be to prompt people to think: "What would Kim do?" and "What would Kim expect?" when thinking about nursing students' learning environment.

"If you talk to any of her nursing mates, they always think about 'how would Kim tackle this situation' and 'what would Kim do'," Mr Livingstone said.

"Not even in just a professional sense, also in their everyday sort of life. She had that sort of impact on all of her friends."

He said his wife's hard work and zest for life was infectious.

"She was just a big ball of fun, to be honest - if you were anywhere near a dance floor or the disco ball she would be on it or under it," Mr Livingstone said.

"She was always dancing, always up for a good time, as long as her health was permitting at the time.

"She was a wonderful mother to Grace and just the best friend you could ever have."

Dr Livingstone's supervisors Professor Michelle Eady and Associate Professor Bonnie Dean remember her as a "shiny bright star" who was loved by her colleagues and throughout the university.

Many of her colleagues joined the university's official procession during the graduation ceremony when her degree was awarded.

"You can't keep people away when it comes to Kim, she had so many friends and she just had this magnetism that drew people towards her," Prof Dean said.

Prof Eady said she had been a dream student.

"I wrote that in the card for her daughter, because she was curious, she was compassionate and she was kind, that was the perfect combination to have as a student, as someone who's a higher degree research student who wants to make a difference and is dedicated to making that difference," she said.

The pair said Dr Livingstone's work would impact generations of nurses by helping to change the way they're trained.

"She was interested in how we best support our nursing students when they go out for their practice nursing for their placement, but also how to best support the people who are supervising those nursing students - they're called nurse preceptors," Prof Eady said.

"Kim had seen things from many different angles - as a nurse educator and as a practicing nurse. But she had also seen things as a patient because because of her illness, she witnessed a lot of these things firsthand.

"She became very passionate about how to make this space the best supportive, communicative space that we could between preceptors and their nursing students."

Prof Dean said Dr Livingstone wanted to look at what motivated nurses to supervise nursing students and help address the challenges they face.

"Registered nurses in clinical settings settings are overwhelmed with workload, with their time, with a lack of recognition, with a lack of resources - and then on top of all that, they're required to supervise incoming nurses," she said.

"So for the next generation of nurses, Kim wanted to find ways to support them better through developing a national framework or developing training packages and forging stronger relationships between the university and the clinical settings so that students have an easier transition into the workplace."