István Szabó is the head of Department of Ecotoxicology of the Institute of Aquaculture and Environmental Safety. 

His research focuses on environmental microbiology, connections between microbial communities and environmental contaminants: biodegradation, biodetoxification, microbiomes of contaminated matrices, plastispheric communities. His expertise lies in isolation and identification of microbial strains, determination of microbial communities, monitoring of the changes of microbiomes. 

Dr. Istvan Szabo work contributes to questions of how the bacterial community changes of the gut microbiome of insect feeding fish.
His theoretical work examines how bacterial community differ in gut microbiome in the case of normal and insect feeded fishes. His empirical work is assessed these theories in farmed fishes feeded naturaly and with insects.

Across his research, he uses state-of-the-art techniques such as new generation sequencing and their statistical analyses. He is able to produce the necessary amount of insect feed for laboratory tests.

He has authored and co-authored more than 40 research articles in high-impact scientific journals.

Dr. Szabó has collaborated with 4 research groups across Europe, and he has successfully applied for a Horizon Europe research grant, and several national projects.