Mechthild Schmitt-Jansen received her PhD in Hydrobiology at the Brandenburg University of Cottbus, Germany in the Department of Freshwater Conservation studying plankton input and dynamics in lowland streams. She continued her work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department Chemical Ecotoxicology and the Department Effect Propagation at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ in the research areas of community ecotoxicology and site-specific toxicity assessment of aquatic systems. From 2005 to 2010 she was involved in the EU-projects MODELKEY and KeyBioEffects as a leading scientist. Since 2005 she has been working as a senior scientist at the Department Bioanalytical Ecotoxicology - UFZ leading the research group aquatic stress ecology. Since 2011 she has been holding a teaching assignment at the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg with lectures related to aquatic ecology and ecotoxicology.

Mechthild Schmitt-Jansen`s research interests concern community responses to multiple stressors and contaminants with special focus on biofilm ecology. Her work is based on ecological concepts like stress/pollution-induced community tolerance (SICT/PICT). In order to understand the underlying processes of stress responses, she investigates molecular responses like metabolomics and links them to phenotypic observations including physiologically-based (photosynthesis) and ecologically-based parameters (dynamics of species traits, community tolerance). Model systems she is working with rang from algal cultures to periphyton communities. She is performing her research at contaminated field sites. To better understand community dynamics at complex field conditions, she addresses specific research questions, derived from field observations by in-situ field investigations and in model-ecosystems like mesocosms (MOBICOS).