Gesine Witt studied technical and analytical chemistry at the University of Greifswald before completing her doctoral studies and her habilitation at the University of Rostock. Her work as a research assistant at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) was decisive in shaping the course of her research career. After receiving the Heisenberg fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG), she spent a year in research at the University of Queensland‘s National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology in Brisbane, Australia. Her last seven years have been spent in research and teaching at the Hamburg ­University of Applied Sciences (HAW) in the field of environmental chemistry, where she heads the Applied Environmental Analysis and Ecotoxicology unit that surveys damage to aquatic and ocean floor environments. She is a member of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC). Due to her expertise, SETAC and others have nominated Gesine Witt as a candidate (Board 318, Water Research) for the DFG Review Board elections to be held in October 2015. She applies her keen interest in research directly to her day-to-day work with students, not only ensuring her student researchers are kept abreast of recent findings and involved in her environmental analysis work but regularly encouraging them to maintain a critical yet holistic approach to their work and to gain experience at other universities and research institutions.