Q-Chem, Inc. was founded in 1993 and was based in Pittsburgh, PA until 2013, when it relocated to Pleasanton, CA. Q-Chem’s scientific contributors include leading quantum chemists around the world. The company is governed by the Board of Directors which currently consists of Peter Gill (Canberra), Anna Krylov (USC), John Herbert (Ohio State), and Hilary Pople. Fritz Schaefer (Georgia) is a Board Member Emeritus. Martin Head-Gordon is a Scientific Advisor to the Board. The close coupling between leading university research groups and Q-Chem Inc. ensures that the methods and algorithms available in Q-Chem are state-of-the-art.
In order to create this technology, the founders of Q-Chem, Inc. built entirely new methodologies from the ground up, using the latest algorithms and modern programming techniques. Since 1993, well over 300 person-years have been devoted to the development of the Q-Chem program. The author list of the program shows the full list of contributors to the current version, and the journal citations for Q-Chem versions 2, 3, and 4497, 867, 868 illustrate the breadth of the Q-Chem developer community. The current group of developers consist of more than 100 people in 9 countries. A brief history of Q-Chem is given in the recent article Q-Chem: An Engine for Innovation.506