Shannon Houck
Staff Scientist at Q-Chem, Inc.
Pleasanton, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolShannon Houck is a staff scientist and theoretical chemist with nine years of experience building and shipping quantum chemistry software, combining deep expertise in wavefunction methods with production-grade C++ and Python development. At Q-Chem she balances scientific research with code release management, grant writing, customer support, and technical marketing, reflecting a rare mix of backend engineering, science communication, and product-facing roles. Her Ph.D. work at Virginia Tech produced wavefunction-based approaches for strongly correlated molecules and practical Fock-space CI implementations, skills she’s extended through contributions to the widely used open-source Psi4 project. Comfortable moving between research code and polished documentation, she also runs workshops, maintains company web presence, and conducts user interviews to align development with real-world workflows. Based in Pleasanton, CA, she brings both academic rigor and cross-functional impact—an unusual combination of diagrammatic theory development and hands-on software delivery.
9 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
North Carolina School of Science and MathematicsChemistry, Chemistry at Virginia Tech Graduate SchoolBachelor of Science (B.S.), Chemistry, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Chemistry at University of Richmond
Github Skills (7)
quantum-chemistry10
c-language10
computational-chemistry10
cprogramming-language10
python10
documentation10
sphinx9
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
psi4/psi4
Nov 2017 - Jun 2020
Open-Source Quantum Chemistry – an electronic structure package in C++ driven by Python
Role in this project:
Technical Writer & Backend Developer
Technical Writer & Backend DeveloperContributions:25 commits, 3 PRs, 14 comments in 2 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Shannon primarily contributed to the documentation of the `psi4` quantum chemistry package, updating and adding information related to the SNS-MP2 plugin. Their work included refining wording, adding installation instructions, and reflecting licensing details. Furthermore, the user added and modified functionality related to `force_soccpi` and `force_doccpi`, indicating some backend development work, specifically within the Wavefunction class. The user also added and tested a new plugin, `psi4fockci`.
physicschemistrypythonquantum-computingelectronic-structure
shannonhouck/psi4fockci
Nov 2017 - Jun 2020
A quick Psi4 implementation of SF-IP/EA.
Contributions:73 commits, 6 PRs, 11 pushes in 2 years 7 months
psi4
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