Seaweeds form the bedrock of marine ecosystems, and despite the proliferation of DNA sequencing studies of their microbiomes, an understanding of their network of interactions remains fragmented. Our group proposes to bring together complex ‘omic datasets that describe myriad taxa that live with seaweeds. We aim to test whether there are patterns in the increasingly high dimensional datasets that are being generated. Our group will be composed of biologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and include expertise in statistical and computational analyses and come from the University of Chicago and Universities across Europe. The workshop participants are characterized by either having important datasets and knowledge of seaweed-microbe partnerships, or the expertise to glean patterns from complex data. Our efforts will focus on whether there is a core set of microbes that live with and foster seaweeds globally, and if there are repeatable features and associations among host-associated microbes. The findings will inform host-microbe interactions, lay the foundation for understanding host-microbe dysfunction in our changing oceans, and inform aquaculture and ecosystem restoration.