Development of Athena began in 2000, led by J. Stone, T. Gardiner, and P. Teuben at the University of Maryland, with support from the NSF Information Technology Research program through grant AST-0113571. Since then, the list of collaborators contributing to the code has grown substantially, and the institution hosting the primary development has switched to Princeton. Continued funding support from both the DOE and NSF are acknowledged.

Below is a list of the major contributors to the code to date:

Xuening Bai (Princeton University)

Kris Beckwith (University of Colorado)

Shane Davis (CITA)

Tom Gardiner (Sandia National Labs)

Nick Hand (Princeton University)

John Hawley (University of Virginia)

Nicole Lemaster (Sandia National Lab Livermore)

Eve Ostriker (University of Maryland):

Ian Parrish (UC Berkeley)

Jake Simon (University of Colorado)

Aaron Skinner (University of Maryland)

Kareem Sorathia (University of Maryland)

Jim Stone (Princeton University)

Peter Teuben (University of Maryland)