The PrIMe project originated from informal discussions held during the 77th International Bunsen Meeting of Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft für Physikalische Chemie on "Formation and Degradation of Hydrocarbons in High-Temperature Reactions," Bad Herrenalb, Germany, October 7-11, 2001. A position paper was prepared that summarizes the underlying ideas.

An open-forum session was held on July 22, 2002, during the 29th International Symposium on Combustion, Sapporo, Japan, endorsing the Initiative; see the report.

The PrIMe Initiative "kick-off" meeting was held in Berkeley, CA, on April 21-22, 2006. In attendance were: Tom Bowman (Stanford U), Nancy Brown (LBL), Zoran Djurisic (UC Berkeley), Michael Frenklach (UC Berkeley), David Golden (Stanford U), Bill Green (MIT), Vadim Knyazev (Catholic U), Adel Sarofim (U of Utah), Phil Smith (U of Utah) Greg Smith (SRI), Wing Tsang (NIST), and Hai Wang (USC).

The initial PrIMe Management Software package was released on January 23, 2007.