LM-UGent was founded in 1959 by the late professor Jozef De Ley. Today it is a multidisciplinary team of more than 60 biologists, biotechnologists, biochemists, engineers, (bio)informaticians, veterinarians, and laboratory technicians led by Peter Vandamme, Anne Willems, Aurélien Carlier, Marie Joossens, Bart Devreese, Petra Van Damme and Kurt Houf. They study microbial diversity, evolution, taxonomy, ecology, infection biology, proteome diversity and biochemistry with various research topics within the environmental, plant, medical and food microbiology.