Scientists at SCM are passionate about making computational chemistry work for you, to help your research and development. We feel strongly about developing user-friendly and powerful software, to make your research life easier. We always value feedback on how to further improve our software in terms of capabilities, speed and usability!
We are an employee-driven company with room for initiative
We believe too many workplace barriers stifle progress and creativity. As a company that credits much of our value to our employees, we strive to provide an environment that encourages employee initiative and promotes an open exchange of ideas. This is achieved by minimizing hierarchy, reducing bureaucracy, and prioritizing freedom to explore for all employees. It is our belief that such an environment leads to much better software and customer experiences.
We take pride in providing quality software and science
Compliments from our end users about our software and technical-scientific support are our highest praise. We aim for powerful, easy-to-use software, which implies staying aware of and incorporating the latest scientific advances as well as presenting complex methods in a flexible, simplified format.
We value our scientific heritage
Our company has existed since 1995. The first paper on ADF appeared in 1973. Hundreds of scientists and students have contributed to the progress of science by adding their ideas to our software. We believe scientific collaboration is a key to our success, and we continue to maintain relationships worldwide with method developers and researchers.
We help our customers succeed
This core principle is captured in our slogan, Making Computational Chemistry work for you. A main driver for our company is to do more than just make quality software we ourselves are satisfied with — it is to make a software product that can be used by our end users to solve real scientific and engineering problems. To date, thousands of scientists have used our software for teaching, publications, internal R&D projects, and patents. We strive to continually meet the needs of our customers, ensuring that our product can be used to develop better molecules, materials, and chemical processes. We’re also prepared to take the extra step to help our customers succeed, either through providing excellent technical support or individualized consulting projects.
We build relationships to last
We think in terms of years or decades, not in terms of months or quarters. We are proud to have many relationships with employees, customers, resellers, academic research groups that have been ongoing for more than 20 years. To maintain long-term relationships, we believe that mutual trust, respect, and openness are paramount.
We collaborate with many researchers and with hardware partners to make fast, efficient, and easy to use software. We work with scientists across the globe and participate in many EU networks to enable you to solve even tougher research problems, and in a broader context, tackle the societal challenges of our current and future generations.
We love to discuss your science!
All our software developers have a background in computational physics or theoretical chemistry (most with a PhD), and have years of experience in applying and developing new computational chemistry software.
We are happy to share our knowledge with you. Our extensive tutorials range from getting to know the graphical user interface to advanced materials simulations taken from current literature. All tutorials can be explored during your fully functional free evaluation of the Amsterdam Modeling Suite.
Installing the Amsterdam Modeling Suite is a one-click operation but our experienced team gives excellent technical support, even during your trial, should you need any help.
Simulations are used in many different application areas to get insight in molecules, reactions, materials & processes. Rational design through detailed understanding, and reverse or forward property predictions helps guide industrial RD&I to reduce experimental efforts. The Amsterdam Modeling Suite helps researchers in a wide range of markets such as the electronics, oil & gas, catalysis, batteries, and pharma. Likewise, non-profit institutions use SCM’s software to tackling a similar wide range research problems, offering also detailed scrutiny and analysis.
The Amsterdam Modeling Suite is an easy to deploy computational chemistry software, covering a wide range of tools. Besides DFT for molecules (ADF) & periodic systems (BAND, Quantum ESPRESSO), fast & approximate electronic structure methods (MOPAC, DFTB), a reactive force field (ReaxFF), a continuum fluid thermodynamics module (COSMO-RS), an advanced driver for complex MD and PES tasks (AMS driver), and a python scripting and workflow tool (PLAMS), it contains an integrated Graphical User Interface – all easy to install from a single package.
See application areasSoftware for Chemistry & Materials B.V. (SCM) is an Amsterdam-based computational chemistry software company. Originally spinning out from the Vrije Universiteit as Scientific Computing & Modelling NV in 1995, the SCM team supports and develops the Amsterdam Modeling Suite, centered around the flagship program Amsterdam Density Functional (ADF), which was originally developed in the 1970s in the theoretical chemistry department. Over a 160 authors have contributed to our software.
SCM is now a thriving private company collaborating with large companies and academic development groups around the world, and participating in many EU projects as well as national ones. SCM’s powerful computational chemistry tools are used by seasoned theoreticians as well as experimental researchers. Our customers are active in academia, government labs and industry studying various fields of chemistry and materials science.
The foundations for ADF were laid in the 1970s, when Prof. Baerends pursued his Ph.D. at the VU University in Amsterdam. Prof. Ziegler joined the development efforts from early on as a post-doc. Both professors have been actively advocating the use of density functional methods to get insight in chemistry and materials properties. Their Ph.D. students and post-docs have considerably contributed to the further development of ADF and BAND, as did the Snijders group in Groningen (see also list of theses). Profs. Baerends and Ziegler were also actively involved with scientific advise for SCM, completing the board of directors with CEO Dr. Stan van Gisbergen. Sadly, Prof. Ziegler passed away in 2015 (see tribute).
Prof. Baerends’ Ph.D. work in the early 1970s laid the foundation for ADF. With a very broad DFT-related interest, a strong pragmatic approach and theoretical grasp, the further development of ADF and BAND has always been a primary research focus. After his Dutch retirement and a few years at Pohang University of Science and Technology he is still active as an emeritus professor at the VU in the Theoretical Chemistry group, which he has headed for a long time. Prof. Baerends is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.
Prof. Ziegler joined the ADF developments very early. He has headed the Theoretical Inorganic Chemistry group at the University of Calgary, Canada, until he suddenly and peacefully passed away in March 2015. Many developments in the ADF Modeling Suite have come from his group, including PES studies, COSMO, and new methods for bonding analysis and spectroscopy. Prof. Ziegler held the prestigious Canada Research Chair, is highly cited among experimental and theoretical chemists alike, and has won many awards, including the Schrödinger Medal and the Steacie Award. Prof. Ziegler held a broad DFT-related research interest, as described in our commemoration.