WelchX Retreat and Pilot Grants

Welch eXperimental (WelchX) Collaboration Retreats

This program aims to bring together Texas researchers to topically focused chemistry meetings and stimulate them to ideate on challenging issues of our time. Early-to mid-career tenured and tenure-track faculty will be invited to this fully in-person summer meeting to stimulate collaborations that foster lasting connections among the participants, thus increasing the density of research ties across Texas and spurring the growth of basic research in the chemical sciences.

The 2026 WelchX retreat took place June 8-June 11 at The Post Oak Hotel at Uptown Houston. The theme was “Chemistry of Life” and we had 24 researchers join from Baylor College of Medicine, Baylor University, Rice University, Texas A&M University, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Texas State University, Texas Tech University, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Texas at El Paso, The University of Texas at San Antonio, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, University of Houston, UT Southwestern Medical Center, and UTHealth Houston.

The retreat’s activities were designed to spur creative, innovative, collaborative ideas that address the most challenging and unexplored issues in bioorganic, medicinal, analytical, and macromolecular chemistry that relate to biological processes; the chemistry of life in its broadest interpretation. Researchers paired off into 12 teams of two and each team will submit a proposal for a collaborative $100,000 pilot grant based on the research they developed together.

The call for applications for the 2027 retreat will be released in January 2027.

The current WelchX Pilot Grant list as of June 1, 2026.

Read about ongoing WelchX Pilot Programs.