Each year since 1957, The Welch Foundation hosts a conference that draws leading scientists from around the world to explore state-of-the-art research in various areas of chemistry. The Foundation sponsors these annual conferences to support fundamental research in chemistry.
The topic of each conference and its participants are selected by a member of the Scientific Advisory Board. It is the Foundation’s desire to present programs with cutting-edge research in a variety of different areas of chemistry.
2026 Conference
The 2026 Welch Conference "Frontiers in Macromolecular Science" will be held October 26-27, 2026 at The Post Oak Hotel at Uptown Houston. The Chair will be Geoffrey W. Coates.
The event will be both in-person and live-streamed. Registration will open Summer 2026.
2025 Conference Highlights
The Welch Foundation hosted its 68th annual conference in Houston on October 27-28 to highlight fundamental research in chemistry and to celebrate the 2025 Welch Awardees in Chemistry.
This year's in-person and live-streamed conference featured the theme "New Horizons in Drug Discovery" and was organized by Welch Scientific Advisory Board Member, Kevan M. Shokat. Discussions covered many facets of this topic, including neurodegeneration, childhood motor neuron disease, cystic fibrosis, cancer, and infectious disease.
The conference was divided into four sessions: “Drugs as Rescue Agents,” “Living Therapeutics,” “Chemoproteomics & Drug Discovery,” and “Molecular Glues. All of the talks can be viewed here on YouTube.
On Monday, Oct. 27, Dr. Pamela J. Bjorkman of the California Institute of Technology gave a keynote address, “Towards a COVID-19 Vaccine to Protect Against SARS-CoV-2 Variants and Animal Sarbecoviruses Without Updating".
On the evening of Oct. 27, Welch Board Chair Frederick Brazelton presented the 2025 Welch Award in Chemistry to Dr. Stuart L. Schreiber and Dr. Peter G. Schultz. Dr. Schreiber was honored for his profound discoveries using chemical probes to understand the chemical machinery of the cell and for developing therapies based on this knowledge. Dr. Schultz was honored for his pioneering contributions to creating new letters in the alphabet of life, and the leveraging of chemical diversity to discover novel therapeutics and materials.
Undergraduate Students—1st place: Punarvash Mitta, Rice University; 2nd place: Isabella Vasquez, Texas Tech University; and 3rd place: Alyssa Kornegay, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Graduate Students—1st place: Sachin Giri, The University of Texas at Dallas.; 2nd place: Muhammad Fiji, University of Houston; and 3rd place: Linqi Cheng, Rice University
Postdoctoral Trainees—1st place: Teng Yuan, Rice University; 2nd place: Sidhant Wagulde, The University of Texas at Dallas; and 3rd place: Haoxin Li, Scripps Research
Laboratory Heads—1st place: Anju Sreelatha, UT Southwestern Medical Center; 2nd place: Abdoulaye Djire, Texas A&M University; and 3rd place: Rafael Verduzco, Rice University
