Understanding the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem processes is one of the most pressing scientific as well as societal challenges. Sascha M.B. Krause’s scientific interests are centered around multidisciplinary approaches to study such relationships in microbial systems. Specifically, his research investigates the ecological and evolutionary drivers of microbial diversity and consequences for the function and stability of ecosystem processes. He is focusing on synthetic model microbial communities and simple environmental communities because the simplicity of microbial model systems enables an optimal degree of experimental control and replication to study the structure and function of biological systems.