Participants from RobustNature were Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c.. Henner Hollert (speaker) and two PhD students, Markus Schmitz (RoadTox project) and Florian Gigl (Synergyfund project). The workshop was discussing DNA approaches in modern environmental monitoring. The participants not only learned a lot about state-of-the-art application scenarios of genomic new approach methods in environmental biomonitoring, but also got exciting insights into current research performed at the Fraunhofer IME and the other participants' institutions, namely the University of Trier, University of Duisburg-Essen, the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) and the LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics/Senckenberg World of Biodiversity, Frankfurt am Main. Moreover, the Federal Environmental Specimen Bank was introduced to all participants and future research collaborations involving the specimen Bank were intensively discussed with promising outcomes. Besides the overarching project TrendDNA, already involving the specimen Bank, many more collaborative research ideas, mutually considering each participant's expertise and building fruitful scientific synergisms were discussed.