Nico Boon
Prof. Dr. ir. Nico Boon is leading the Microbial Community Engineering (MiCE) group within the Center of Microbial Ecology and Technology (CMET) at Ghent University. Since 1998 the research has focused on the microbial ecology of drinking water, activated sludge, soils and aquaculture systems. The areas of interest have been the development of molecular methods (Flow Cytometry, single-cell Raman spectroscopy, second and third generation sequencing, Fluorescent in situ Hybdridisation, Real-Time PCR,…) for the qualitative and quantitative description of microorganisms and investigations of microbial processes in carbon and nitrogen cycling, novel bioaugmentation strategies for xenobiotics, extreme environment discovery, biometallurgy, microbial protein production,…. During the last years, the research interests are focused on the development of new microbial ecological theories to link the microbial community structure to functionality. The central theme of this research is to understand the composition, functionality and the limits under which a microbial community can (optimally) perform. At present, there is limited theoretical insight into the ecology of mixed microbial cultures and engineering practices to manage those microbial resources are fragmentary. The final aim is to structure and optimize the performance of the community with respect to a desirable set of outputs. This strategy is called Microbial Resource Management (MRM).
