Dr. Meisha Holloway-Phillips received her PhD at the University of Tasmania (Australia) in 2011. Through a post-doc at the Australian National University with Prof. Graham Farquhar she was introduced to the power and beauty of stable isotopes as tracers of plant physiological and environmental processes. Her work has provided key advances in the understanding of 13C and 18O isotope fractionation during photosynthesis and transpiration and now works at the University of Basel in Prof. Ansgar Kahmen’s group, investigating hydrogen isotope biochemistry and its relationship with plant physiological responses to environmental change. Her work is essential to better appreciate the significance of isotopic records in biological archives (tree rings) and interpret palaeoenvironments.