Nico Boon leads the Microbial Community Engineering (MiCE) group within the Center for Microbial Ecology and Technology (CMET) at Ghent University. His research focuses on applied microbial ecology of managed and engineered ecosystems. He develops molecular methods such as Next Generation Sequencing, Fluorescent in situ Hybridization, Real-Time PCR, and Flow Cytometry for the description of microorganisms. His work includes investigating microbial processes in drinking water production, the carbon and nitrogen cycles, new bioaugmentation strategies for xenobiotics, and the bioprecipitation and application of catalytic particles. Recently, his research has focused on new microbial ecological theories to link the structure and functionality of microbial communities. This has led to Microbial Resource Management (MRM), a strategy to optimize the performance of microbial communities.