This document contains the nomination statements for each of the candidates for the TSC seats opening in 2024
The electoral roll for this election can can be found in contributors.md.
The election will take place online using the Belenios online voting platform.
Three people will be elected, to join Lev Bishop (IBM), Dor Israeli (Quantum Machines), and Blake Johnson (IBM) whose seats are not up for re-election this cycle. Votes will be counted using the Condorcet/Schulze method to produce a ranked list of the candidates. The top three candidates will be elected to the TSC. The election will close on Monday the 15th of January, 2024 at 12:00 UTC.
In alphabetical order, the candidates are:
I am a software engineer at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, where I serve as lead developer for an in-house OpenQASM+OpenPulse compiler. I have worked on compiler toolchains or control software at three quantum computing companies, with experience spanning multiple qubit architectures (superconducting qubits & quantum dots), multiple levels of abstraction (gate-based and pulse-based compilation), and multiple hardware backends (from commercial off-the-shelf waveform generators to more boutique efforts).
OpenQASM is the premier language for describing quantum experiments, for both technical and social reasons. As a matter of the language itself, the "two-level semantics" -- where gate-based circuits may be mixed with pulse-based calibrations -- is well suited to the reality of quantum hardware today. Just as significantly, the community surrounding the language offers tooling and support that no single quantum effort could sustain independently. At AWS we have bet on OpenQASM for both of these reasons.
The field of quantum computing never stands still. As a TSC member, my mission would be to steer OpenQASM to comfortably meet the demands of increasingly larger and more sophisticated experimental demonstrations. In particular, I am interested in exploring extensions to the language which enrich the "classical/quantum" interface with ideas from distributed computing (such as message passing interfaces or refinements to the OpenQASM memory model). I am also very interested in the relationship between OpenQASM as a circuit representation to the next-generation of QEC tooling, for which it may be natural to express experiments in other terms (e.g. with lattice surgery operations). Along these frontiers and others, I will work to ensure that OpenQASM remains a pillar of the industry.
Quantinuum is the world’s largest integrated quantum computing company. Quantinuum focuses on trapped-ion computing using the QCCD architecture. In addition to its high fidelity, the architecture also allows for mid-circuit measurement.
As the Software Development Manager at Quantinuum, Jialin is responsible for the system software teams, encompassing the compiler team, cloud platform team, and quantum programming language team. Furthermore, Jialin assumes the role of Program Manager for Quantinuum's quantum chemistry team.
Jialin's participation in the TSC would enable him to bring Quantinuum's unique perspectives.
Simon learned to code from the GW-BASIC manuals in the small town of Melkbosstrand on the shores of the Atlantic.
Now by day he develops for Zurich Instruments, where he works on LabOne Q, their open source experiment design and compiler toolkit. By night he is a QuTiP maintainer, looking after its internal data structures and open quantum system solvers, and fixing bugs and doing community support.
On the TSC, Simon hopes to represent two different communities of which Zurich Instruments and QuTiP form a part:
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builders of current NISQ devices across a variety of quantum device architectures who are looking to incorporate OpenQASM as part of their control software or compilation chain today.
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authors of tools for simulating, modeling and optimizing quantum circuits at the pulse level, who are looking to use OpenQASM to describe the the circuit or control operations being modelled.
Simon has been indirectly involved with OpenQASM for some time: He helps maintain QuTiP's OpenQASM 2 compiler, spends much of his time at Zurich Instruments improving LabOne Q's OpenQASM 3 compiler, and supervised a student project at Maastricht University to implement an OpenQASM 3 compiler for neutral atoms.
Recently he has made a few small contributions to OpenQASM itself, filing off some rough edges in documentation and the handling of whitespace in duration literals.
He is a big fan of the concept of "just-enough" governance and hopes to work with the other members of the TSC to shepherd OpenQASM and OpenPulse from their solid foundations to being mature specifications -- with excellent documentation for implementers and coders, and a carefully selected set of software tooling to help both produce excellent software.
Simon has a long history of contributing to the Python open source ecosystem, and a PSF Community Service Award. He hopes to bring this experience to OpenQASM and, in this way, continue being of service into the future.
Yunong is a senior scientist driving the compilation effort at Amazon Braket. He helped introduce OpenQASM3 into Braket, establishing it as the language specification for all gate-based workloads. As one of the top contributors in the OpenQASM repository, he implemented the official Python AST and has been an active participant in several working groups. Yunong’s research interests mostly focus on breaking abstraction layers in the quantum software stack for better efficiency and using formal methods to verify the correctness of quantum programs. With his research background, Yunong has also made contributions to many open-source quantum compilers, including Qiskit, ScaffCC, and a formally verified compiler, Giallar. If elected, Yunong aims to leverage his research experience, his understanding of practical user demands for OpenQASM and his hands-on experience with a variety of quantum technologies at Braket to help with the future evolution of OpenQASM, ensuring it remains comprehensive, robust, and reflective of the community's needs.