Welcome to the 6th International Conference on Natural Product Discovery and Development in the Genomic Era
We are delighted to welcome you to the 6th International Conference on Natural Product Discovery and Development in the Genomic Era, taking place January 17–21, 2027, in Long Beach, California.
Following five successful conferences in San Diego and Clearwater Beach, the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (SIMB), the Korean Society for Microbiology and Biotechnology (KMB), and the Society for Actinomycetes Japan (SAJ) are coming together again to provide an international forum for advances in natural product discovery, biosynthesis, engineering, and development.
This meeting brings together researchers who approach natural products from complementary perspectives: chemistry, microbiology, genomics, biochemistry, computational biology, and biotechnology. Its distinctive strength is connecting the discovery of molecules and biosynthetic pathways with an understanding of their biological functions and opportunities for their engineering and application. By bringing together scientists from academia and industry, the conference fosters collaboration across disciplines and connects fundamental discoveries with natural product development and application.
Whether you are identifying new metabolites, investigating biosynthetic mechanisms, developing computational tools, engineering natural product production, or advancing compounds toward therapeutic and other applications, we invite you to join us. Students, postdoctoral researchers, and established investigators will find opportunities to share their work, explore new techniques, and build collaborations. For us as organizers, the opportunity to bring this community together—and to encourage connections among researchers whose expertise can move the field forward—is a central motivation for shaping the meeting.
The 2027 program will provide opportunities to engage with emerging research through scientific presentations, poster discussions, and conversations with colleagues. Two afternoon workshops will complement the scientific program: the first will explore metabolomics and mass spectrometry-based approaches to natural product discovery, followed by a second highlighting JGI capabilities in multi-omics and DAP-seq for natural products research. These workshops will introduce resources and approaches that attendees can bring to their own research.
The conference builds on a longstanding tradition established by the Genetics and Molecular Biology of Industrial Microorganisms (GMBIM) and Biotechnology of Microbial
Products (BMP) meetings. Those forums brought together scientists studying microbial genetics, biochemistry, and the discovery and production of microbial metabolites. Today’s conference continues that tradition while embracing the expanding capabilities of genomics, analytical chemistry, and biosynthetic engineering.
We thank the organizing committee, session conveners, workshop instructors, sponsoring societies, sponsors, and SIMB staff for their contributions to the meeting. Above all, we look forward to the ideas, questions, and perspectives that you will bring to Long Beach. We hope you will join us for an engaging meeting filled with scientific exchange, new connections, and opportunities to shape the future of natural product research.
Best wishes,
Jackie Winter – Chair
University of Utah
Wenjun Zhang – Co-Chair
University of California, Berkeley