Rapid assessment of the biostability of metalworking systems is the future. It is road-center on the critical path to proper maintenance of the systems and limiting waste. Ghent University is a Dutch-speaking public university located in Ghent, Belgium. It is one of the larger Flemish universities, consisting of 38,000 students and 7,900 staff members. At Ghent, the Laboratory of Biochemistry at is seeking partners interested in real-time microbial viability assessment in water-based systems susceptible to microbial growth. The unique process promises identification of different bacterial and fungal viability states based on flow cytometric analysis, allowing a detailed assessment of the biostability properties of water-based systems. Cellular damage can be monitored in great detail with variations in exposure time, compound composition and concentration, pH and more.