GESS is a graduate programme for stress ecology. It focuses on how natural stresses (e.g., drought, temperature extremes, diseases) and stress deriving from human activities (e.g., toxic chemicals, habitat destruction) impact ecological systems. GESS is led by an interdisciplinary team of scientists from a number of Danish institutions. An important goal of the graduate school is to promote public-private partnerships in the training of professional scientists to perform high-level research and contribute to improving the scientific basis for environmental risk assessment and management.