Add TSC Statements of Intent to main branch

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ version increase.
 
 ### Timing of Releases
 
-The OpenQASM Technical Steering Committee is the final arbiter on when a new
+The [OpenQASM Technical Steering Committee](./governance.md) is the final arbiter on when a new
 semantic version of the specification and reference parser is warranted. The TSC
 expects the cadence of releases to be dicated by the contributions provided by
 the community, and not by a time-based schedule.

contributors.md

@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
 # TSC
 
 - Blake Johnson
-- Dor Israeli
 - Erik Davis
 - Jialin Dou
 - Lev Bishop
+- Serwan Asaad
 - Simon Cross
 
 # Contributors by commit

governance.md

@@ -18,14 +18,15 @@ This governance structure is scoped to just OpenQASM itself and not Qiskit as a
 
 ## Structures
 
-We will form a **Technical Steering Committee**. The TSC shall be composed of 6 Contributors. The current TSC (as of June 26, 2024) is:
+We will form a **Technical Steering Committee**. The TSC shall be composed of 6 Contributors.
+The current TSC members (as of June 26, 2024) are, in alphabetical order:
 
-* Blake Johnson (IBM Quantum)
-* Serwan Asaad (Quantum Machines)
-* Erik Davis (AWS)
-* Jialin Dou (Quantinuum)
-* Lev S Bishop (IBM Quantum)
-* Simon Cross (Zurich Instruments)
+* [Blake Johnson (IBM Quantum)](./tsc_statements_of_intent.md#blake-johnson-ibm-quantum)
+* [Erik Davis (AWS)](./tsc_statements_of_intent.md#erik-davis-aws)
+* [Jialin Dou (Quantinuum)](./tsc_statements_of_intent.md#jialin-dou-quantinuum)
+* [Lev S Bishop (IBM Quantum)](./tsc_statements_of_intent.md#lev-bishop-ibm-quantum)
+* [Serwan Asaad (Quantum Machines)](./tsc_statements_of_intent.md#serwan-asaad-quantum-machines)
+* [Simon Cross (Zurich Instruments)](./tsc_statements_of_intent.md#simon-cross-zurich-instruments)
 
 TSC meetings shall be open to all **Contributors**. The TSC may invite additional guests at its discretion. The TSC will make decisions by simple majority vote of its members. TSC meetings shall require a quorum of 66% of voting members present to make a decision by vote (ie, 4 members for the initial TSC). If a TSC meeting does not have quorum, it may still discuss and record minutes. The TSC may make decisions outside of meetings (e.g. on a pull request) so long as voting/approval in that forum meets the quorum requirement. Upon request from any TSC member, any decision must be deferred until the next TSC meeting, to enable live discussion.
 
@@ -48,6 +49,8 @@ The TSC will, from time to time, elect to create **Working Groups** to study iss
 
 ### Past TSCs
 
+* On 26 June, 2024 Dor Israeli resigned and the TSC appointed Serwan Asaad to serve the remainder of Dor's term.
+
 * On 15 January, 2024 voting in the TSC election closed, resulting in the following changes in the composition of the TSC.
     * Incoming members
         * Jialin Dou (Quantinuum)

tsc_statements_of_intent.md

@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+# Technical Steering Commitee members' Statements of Intent
+
+In alphabetical order
+
+## Blake Johnson (IBM Quantum)
+
+Blake is the Quantum Engine Lead at IBM Quantum, where one of his principal responsibilities is
+technical evolution of what is executable on IBM Quantum systems. Blake has sought to ensure that
+OpenQASM lives up to its name of being an open project, by soliciting feedback on early drafts of
+the OpenQASM 3 proposal, and eventually forming the OpenQASM Technical Steering committee. If
+elected for another term, Blake will strive to continue to expand the OpenQASM community and create
+an ecosystem of people and code that work together across a variety of contexts (e.g. academic and
+industry, qubit modality, etc.) while also pushing for a language that can exercise increasingly
+powerful capabilities in quantum computing systems.
+
+## Erik Davis (AWS)
+
+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.
+
+## Jialin Dou (Quantinuum)
+
+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.
+
+## Lev Bishop (IBM Quantum)
+
+Lev leads the quantum software architecture team at IBM Quantum and has been involved with OpenQASM since the very beginning, before it was "Open" and was merely an internal project. His main technical goals have been to expand scope and adoption of the language while keeping a focus on making sure all the features are well-defined and work together properly so the language remains a tight interchange format and doesn't accidentally become a "kitchen-sink" language that by trying to please everyone ends up ill-suited to any particular task, nor becomes fragmented by incompatible partial implementations. If re-elected he intends to continue in this role of making sure all proposed additions have clear use-cases and interact cleanly with existing functionality. As recent examples of this approach please see the discussions around arrays (which were added to the language in a different form than the initial proposall) and dynamic qubit dereferencing (which was put on hold pending further language evolution). From a governance point of view Lev's philosophy is to introduce "just-enough" governance to allow smooth collaboration, which means only adding formality and process when there is a present need based on the size and tensions of the collaboration and otherwise keeping fast and lightweight. He thinks this approach has been successful so far for OpenQASM and is pleased with the evolution of the community during his first term, and if re-elected intends to use his TSC authority light-handedly with consensus as being the primary goal. An example of this approach was starting the initial openqasm repo within the qiskit org for expediency, but migrating to a dedicated org as soon as it became clear that there were advantages to doing so.
+
+
+## Serwan Asaad (Quantum Machines)
+
+Serwan Asaad is a product manager at Quantum Machines where he leads the development of software layers above the QUA pulse-level language, which include the calibration software QUAlibrate and the OpenQASM3-to-QUA compiler. He also developed the open-source software QuAM, which can effectively translate gates into hardware-specific pulse-level instructions, and thus facilitates OpenQASM3-to-QUA compilation.
+
+Serwan holds a PhD from UNSW, where he demonstrated the coherent electric control of a high-spin nucleus and achieved record-breaking spin-qubit 2Q gate fidelities. Throughout his academic career, Serwan had a strong focus on developing measurement control software such as [SilQ](https://nulinspiratie.github.io/SilQ/) (not to be confused with Silq), and contributing to the open-source projects QCoDeS and PycQED.
+
+Serwan predicts a transition towards circuit-level languages for quantum control, and OpenQASM3 serves as a necessary bridge in this transition. We're hearing requests from several partners and customers, and we want to promote this integration as much as possible. Ensuring its continued adoption as a standard requires tight collaboration with relevant parties both up and down the stack. Serwan can contribute to this by discussing the challenges and resolutions that arise when integrating OpenQASM3 with hardware-specific languages.
+
+## Simon Cross (Zurich Instruments)
+
+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:
+
+- 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.
+
+- 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.