After many years of serving as a researcher, a teacher and a mentor, Dr. Gisela Witz retired from the Department of Environmental and Community Medicine at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She served as the Deputy Director and then the Associate Director of the Joint Graduate Program in Toxicology (JGPT) and was an active member of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute. As a leader and lecturer in the JGPT, she affected the lives of numerous students either through teaching, mentorship, or just serving as a concerned "friend." She is still, even today, the co-chair of the JGPT Academic Standing and Advancement Committee, and is very much available as a superb advisor of JGPT students - many of whom in the past have gone on to great success in industry and government. Dr. Witz conducted seminal research on the metabolism of benzene to hematotoxic, ring-opened products including reactive aldehydes and their cellular mechanisms of toxicity; the role of DNA-protein crosslinks in benzene hematotoxicity; and the biomarkers of benzene exposure including urinary muconic acid and muconaldehyde-protein adducts. She participated in the initial research that suggested that free radicals and active oxygen species might be involved in tumor promotion.

	Association of lipid peroxidation with antenatal betamethasone and oxygen radial disorders in preterm infants. Weinberger B, Anwar M, Henien S, Sosnovsky A, Hiatt M, Jochnowitz N, Witz G, Hegyi T. Biol Neonate. 2004;85(2):121-7. Epub 2003 Nov 19.
	Use of stable isotopically labeled benzene to evaluate environmental exposures. Weisel CP, Park S, Pyo H, Mohan K, Witz G. J Expo Anal Environ Epidemiol. 2003 Sep;13(5):393-402.
	DNA-protein crosslink and DNA strand break formation in HL-60 cells treated with trans, trans-muconaldehyde, hydroquinone and their mixtures. Amin RP, Witz G. Int J Toxicol. 2001; Mar-Apr 20(2):69-80.
	Structure-activity relationships in the induction of DNA-protein crosslinks by hematotoxic ring-opened benzene metabolites and related compounds in HL60 cells. Schoenfeld HA, Witz G. Toxicol Lett. 2000 Jul 27; 116(1-2):79-88.