A security officer from the USS Discovery who joins the boarding party sent to the wrecked USS Glenn in 2256 and is killed there by the giant tardigrade later nicknamed Ripper.
Kowski appears in Context Is for Kings. He is assigned to the team led by Commander Ellen Landry that takes a shuttle to the derelict Glenn, alongside Stamets, Tilly and the prisoner Michael Burnham.
Aboard the darkened ship the party finds the mutilated crew, dead Klingon boarders and something large moving in the corridors. The creature bursts out and seizes Kowski, killing him almost at once, and the rest of the party run for the shuttle while Burnham draws it away through the access tubes.
His death is the audience's first sight of the tardigrade, which Lorca then has secretly beamed aboard Discovery for study.