On 7 October 2026, Prof. Bernard Slippers presented the BRICS Seminar at the Braunschweig Integrated Centre of Systems Biology (BRICS) in Germany. BRICS is a joint centre of TU Braunschweig, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), the Leibniz Institute DSMZ and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). The seminar took place during the second leg of Bernard's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award stay at TU Braunschweig, and built on themes from his keynote at the Molecular Biology of Fungi Symposium in September. His talk, A new view on the Naturgemälde: What connects von Humboldt, AI and the future of forest health, started from Alexander von Humboldt's holistic approach to understanding nature, which connected observations across disciplines. Two centuries of increasing specialisation have generated enormous scientific progress, but have also left gaps in our understanding of complex environmental challenges. New computational and agentic AI systems now make it possible to integrate vast amounts of data across disciplines. Using research on plant-associated microbiomes as an example, Bernard explored how these approaches can reveal previously overlooked patterns and knowledge gaps, while also opening new possibilities for connecting data, laboratory research and field observations. The talk closed with two questions for the research community: what comes next for scientific research, and how should we train the next generation of researchers? The discussion that followed also considered how interdisciplinary research can best be supported, and how young scientists can be prepared to work across disciplines. These questions are, amongst many others, central to FABI's own work on forest health, where progress increasingly depends on integration across fields, sectors and borders.