Deborah Pinheiro Dick received her B.S. in Chemistry in 1982 and her M.S in Soil Science/Soil Chemistry in 1986 from the Universidad Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil. From 1987 until 1992 she was a DAAD Fellow at the Technical University München, Freising, Germany, where she got her PhD in Soil Science (Soil Chemistry and Mineralogy). Later, in 1996 she gained a DAAD Postdoctoral position at the Institute of Spectrochemistry and Applied Spectroscopie (ISAS), Dortmund, Germany. In 1986 she started as Assistant Professor at the Physical-Chemistry Department of the Institute of Chemistry at UFRGS (Porto Alegre) and in 1994 she was promoted to Associate Professor. Presently she is Full Professor at the same department and also a Professor of the Soil Science graduation program of the same University. Her main research field is Organic matter dynamics and Interactions in terrestrial environment, including soils from different climate, mineral coal, composting and biochar. Since 2000 she has established joint scientific projects with the Technical University München and Forschungs zentrum Jülich (Germany) and Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiologia de Sevilla (IRNAS), SPAIN. She has advisored 18 Master of Science Dissertations and 16 PhD thesis and published 70 articles and 6 book chapters. Since 2012, Prof. Deborah P. Dick is a board member of the International Humic Substances Society (IHSS) and since 2007 she is the Coordinator of the Brazilian Chapter of the IHSS.