Educational Technology Services at UCSD has generously agreed to fund a university site license for Spartan, the computational chemistry software package. This means that any faculty, staff, or student can download Spartan and run the program on their computer, provided they are connected to the campus network, either directly or via the UCSD VPN service. The license has been extended for another year (until 9/2025). Thank you!
Spartan is a computational chemistry program from Wavefunction that is in widespread use in academia for instructional and research endeavors across a number of disciplines. Spartan has the best graphical user interface for the “building” of molecular structures, including complex biomolecules and weakly bound aggregates, and greatly simplifies the setup, execution, and analysis of calculations. Spartan implements a wide variety of modern computational methods, including semi-empirical, Hartree-Fock, and DFT methods, for ground and excited state species as well as transition states. All methods beyond molecular mechanics and semi-empirical utilize the latest Q-Chem computational engines. It is available for the Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms and can utilize multiple cores (up to 16 cores but ask if you need more) for some calculations. It also incorporates extremely powerful visualization tools to represent molecular orbitals, vibrational modes, electrostatic potentials, and calculated spectra and energy levels. Spartan is also compatible with a number of other common file formats in computational chemistry (e.g. .cif, .smi, .mol, .mol2). For example, Spartan can directly download PDB files from the RCSB Protein Data Bank. Because of its widespread adoption, there are a number of text and work books available that have example calculations, some available directly from Wavefunction. The program also includes an Activities menu with Tutorials and Topics that provide further information and the built-in user manual has many other useful exercises. The Spartan software could be used by researchers as well as instructors and students in a variety of courses.
The Spartan@UCSD website has information about how to download and license Spartan, instructional documents, tutorial videos, tips, example handouts, and useful links.
2/27/26: Warren Hehre, the founder of Wavefunction and a creator of Spartan, has passed away.
2/24/26: The recent issue of the license server being offline has been addressed. That issue was separate from the ongoing problems related to the new system-wide network security mandates that prevented ready access to the license server. A solution to those problems has now been implemented by Academic Technology Services (Thanks!). Spartan can now be licensed by the UCSD license server, spartanlicense.ucsd.edu, when connected to the campus network by the following methods:
If you encounter a licensing issue, please submit a ticket to the Service Desk.
2/23/26 2:25 PM: The license server appears to be inaccessible again. IT has has been notified. If you encounter a licensing issue, please submit a ticket to the Service Desk.
2/23/26 9:13 AM: The Spartan license server appears to be back online. If you encounter a licensing issue, please submit a ticket to the Service Desk.
2/23/26 9:00 AM: The Spartan license server is apparently currently offline. IT is aware of the situation and is actively working to restore access.
2/9/26 UPDATE: While there is still uncertainty regarding a permanent solution for access to the Spartan license server, the following connection methods have been demonstrated to work.
A wired (Ethernet) connection to the campus network.
A connection to the campus wireless network (e.g. UCSD-PROTECTED).
If this is not successful, log in to the campus VPN regardless of which wireless network you are connected to.
Note that the UCSD-GUEST network still requires a VPN login.
Connections from outside the campus network still require a log in to the VPN.
10/03/25: Campus IT continues to investigate the issue with the Spartan license server. Connecting to the campus VPN, regardless of which wireless network is being utilized, is still the recommended workaround.
8/28/25: There is currently a known issue where Spartan will fail to obtain a license when connected to the UCSD-PROTECTED WiFi network. The current workaround is to connect to the campus VPN network. This issue does not affect machines connected to the campus ethernet. Campus IT is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it.
8/28/25: The Spartan computational server is now available.
The Spartan computational server will be temporarily unavailable. The server will be accessible by this Friday, August 29th.
Spartan`24 v.1.3.0 has been released for all platforms (MacOS, Windows, Linux). You can download it here. The updated version now includes seven machine learning models for improved accuracy and efficiency. More detail is available in this brochure. The Spartan computational server has also been updated so submitted jobs can take advantage of the new capabilities of v1.3.0.
Spartan`24 updates for MacOS (v1.2.0), Windows (v1.2.0), and Linux (v24.2.0) are available for download here. The version on the Spartan computational server has also been updated.
Spartan`24 has now been installed on the computaional server. You can take advantage of any of the new features of `24 for jobs submitted to the Spartan server.
Spartan`24 has been released for MacOS and Linux. Download the latest versions here and start calculating!
The Spartan computational server will be updated to `24 in the coming days. Until then, jobs submitted to the server will not be able to take advantage of any of the new features, such as the neural network model.
A new example computational project for organic chemistry laboratory (courtesy of Prof. Jeremy Klosterman)
Spartan`24 has been released for the Windows platform. Check out the latest iteration from Wavefunction which can be downloaded here. MacOS and Linux versions should soon follow.
The computational chemistry handout for CHEM 6 has been updated to include a Spartan tutorial section.
Spartan`24 is scheduled to be released soon and will be available to the UCSD user community. A brochure detailing some of the new features in the update, which include neural network capability for determing conformer distributions and NMR spectra of flexible molecules, has been posted on the About Spartan page.
1/19/24 Two tutorial videos on NMR calculations
A remote Spartan computational server is now available, with support from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry! The server, located at spartanserver.ucsd.edu, accepts remote submission of computational jobs from your personal computer. The server is very capable and can handle computationally intensive jobs that might otherwise be intractable on your hardware. Directions for accessing the Spartan server are on the Using Spartan page. Anyone at UCSD can utilize the Spartan server.
Did you know Spartan`20 can act as a remote server for computational jobs? This is a great way to leverage more powerful hardware. Instructions for setting up the server are here.
Tutorial video on the peptide builder
Tutorial video on spectral graph manipulation
Tutorial video on excited state calculations
Links to Spartan keywords and FAQs