Prof. Bernard Slippers, Director of FABI, made three visits to Germany in 2026 as a Humboldt Research Award holder. The award, presented as part of the Germany Global Minds Initiative, supports research stays with a host institution, in his case at the Technische Universität Braunschweig (TU Braunschweig) with Prof. André Fleißner of the Institute of Genetics. The collaboration between the Braunschweig and FABI groups has grown over three years into a hub for fungal research, including work on the interactions between fungal communities and tree health under stress, and on environmentally friendly strategies to manage invasive beetles and fungi.
The time in Germany began in Bamberg, where Bernard was one of ten 2026 award recipients at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award Symposium (19-22 March). In a programme of round tables and lectures across fields from materials science to molecular biology, he presented a seminar on how latent pathogens reshape forest health in a changing climate.
The first research stay followed in June. Over a month based at TU Braunschweig, Bernard also visited colleagues at the Julius Kühn-Institut, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, the University of Hamburg, Kiel University and the University of Göttingen. Discussions centred on interactions between plants, fungi and other microbes in a changing environment, and on future consortium ideas between FABI and these German institutions at the intersection of biotic and abiotic stress, host biology and social-ecological systems in forest health. The visit concluded with the Humboldt Foundation Annual Meeting in Berlin, held under the motto “Connected for Impact”.
The second stay, from September to the end of October, started with the Molecular Biology of Fungi Symposium at TU Braunschweig (9-11 September), where Bernard was a keynote speaker. He also visited KWS in Einbeck, with Prof. Kerstin Krüger and Dr Rene Heim (University of Göttingen, and part of the Satellite Lab in Remote Sensing of Plant Health at FABI). Bernard engaged with colleagues at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), where he met Prof. Christine Beemelmanns and Prof. Marc Stadler, partners in the Mycobiomics 2.0 project, as well as colleagues of HZI based in Braunschweig. Conveniently, HZI and Leibniz-Institut DSMZ-Deutsche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und Zellkulturen GmbH are located right next to each other, so a visit with Dr Andrey Yurkov and Dr Christiane Bashien was just a few steps away. Braunschweig is indeed a hub of science in Europe! In October, he presented a seminar to the Braunschweig Integrated Centre of Systems Biology (BRICS), spoke at the Ibá Executive Roundtable on Biotechnology for Climate-Resilient Forestsin São Paulo, and shared his experience with agentic AI research tools at a workshop with colleagues from across Braunschweig and beyond.
The final week included a seminar at the Julius Kühn-Institut in Braunschweig, a visit to its headquarters in Quedlinburg to meet Prof. Henrik Hartmann, who heads the Institute for Forest Protection, and an introductory lecture for the Artificial Intelligence for Molecular Sciences course at TU Braunschweig. FABI thanks the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Prof. Fleißner and all colleagues involved. Several of these activities are covered in more detail in other items on the FABI news page.