Gergely Maróti has been the Principal Investigator of the Algal and Microbial Genomics Group in the Biological Research Center in Szeged (Hungary) since 2012. After completing PhD, Gergely joined the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, MD, USA, where he held a permanent position as a member of the JCVI’s Synthetic Biology Group led by the Nobel-Laureate Hamilton O. Smith. Armed with strong genomics skills, he returned to Hungary and developed a research team in Szeged, which is now embedded in the domestic and international scientific communities and participates in several international projects. The main focus of the group is the basic research of various microbial interactions and the application of complex microbial communities in bioenergy generation and environmental biotechnology. Gergely Maróti has co-written more than 120 peer-reviewed international publications (H-index: 35, ORCID: 0000-0002-3705-0461) in the fields of microbial biotechnology and molecular microbiology. His main interest is the investigation of interkingdom microbial interactions with special emphasis on natural and synthetic algal-bacterial communities and anaerobic degradation systems. Beside conducting fundamental research he has strong commitment and ability to transform basic scientific achievements into exploitable products. His research team combines the most recent high-throughput omics approaches with traditional microbiology and molecular biology ways as well as with cutting-edge bioinformatic analyses including read-based and genome-centric metagenome invetigations.