Aleš Lapanje is head of the Colloid Biology group at JSI and has successfully coordinated several national, international and industrial research projects. He has extensive knowledge of microbial community dynamics by using advanced molecular biology tools and colloid physics. His interest is to combine physical methods with microbiology to advance the research in the intermicrobial interactions as well as to develop new applied approaches that can be used in agriculture, remediation of polluted environments and medicine. During his research he has been developing methods that enable studying colloid-bacteria interactions, electrostatic interactions of bacterial cells and their entrapment in different matrices.