Qiskit Advocates

Qiskit Advocates
Name	Qiskit Advocates
Type	Community program
Founded	2018
Founder	IBM Quantum
Area served	Global
Focus	Quantum computing outreach and education

Qiskit Advocates are a global cohort of volunteers promoted by IBM Quantum to support the Qiskit open-source software ecosystem and to accelerate adoption of quantum computing technologies through outreach, education, and development collaborations. The program connects advocates with academic institutions, research centers, technology companies, startup incubators, and conference organizers to advance projects and curricula across communities centered on quantum processors, quantum algorithms, and quantum software stacks.

Overview

Qiskit Advocates operate at the intersection of IBM Quantum, IBM Research, MIT, Caltech, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Tsinghua University, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Perimeter Institute, Argonne National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CERN, Microsoft Research, Google Quantum AI, Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Systems, Xanadu, IonQ, Honeywell Quantum Solutions, Alibaba DAMO Academy, Baidu Research, Facebook AI Research, NVIDIA Research, Intel Labs, Meta Platforms, Amazon Web Services, Oracle Corporation, Red Hat, Canonical Ltd., GitHub, Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, IEEE, ACM, SIAM, Nature (journal), Science (journal), Physical Review Letters, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by promoting Qiskit libraries, tutorials, and workshops. Advocates collaborate with conferences and events such as Q2B, QIP (conference), APS March Meeting, NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, SIGGRAPH, Strange Loop, Black Hat USA, DEF CON, CES, SXSW, TED, SXSW EDU, Web Summit, South by Southwest, and regional hackathons to integrate Qiskit into curricula, hackdays, and research projects.

Program History

Launched by IBM Quantum in the late 2010s, the initiative mirrors community programs like Google Developer Experts, Microsoft MVP Award, Red Hat Certified Engineers, Apache Committers, Linux Kernel Maintainers, Mozilla Reps, and Kubernetes SIGs. Early phases involved linkages to initiatives at IBM Q Experience, IBM Cloud, Watson Research Center, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Zapata Computing, Cambridge Quantum Computing, and collaborations at universities such as Columbia University, Princeton University, Yale University, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Santa Barbara, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Peking University, Seoul National University, KAIST, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and University of Melbourne. Milestones included community-driven contributions to Qiskit Terra, Qiskit Aer, Qiskit Ignis, Qiskit Aqua, and later modular libraries influenced by publications in Quantum, npj Quantum Information, and community standards proposed at NIST workshops and QED-C forums.

Roles and Responsibilities

Advocates serve as liaisons among projects, research labs, and educational programs—connecting IBM Quantum facilities, IBM Q System One, campus quantum labs, and industrial partners like Siemens, Bosch, Schneider Electric, Siemens Healthineers, GE Research, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Airbus, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Philips, Siemens Healthineers, Novartis, Roche, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and AstraZeneca—while promoting reproducible software development practices used in repositories hosted on GitHub and presented at venues like arXiv, Open Science Framework, Zenodo, and discipline-specific workshops organized by IEEE Quantum Week and ACM SIGPLAN. They mentor contributors, author tutorials, maintain sample projects, and coordinate study groups that align with curricula at Coursera, edX, Udacity, Pluralsight, Khan Academy, and university extension programs.

Selection and Governance

Selection draws on demonstrated contributions to Qiskit repositories, community leadership, and track records in research or industry; candidates often hold positions at institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Imperial College London, University of Edinburgh, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Technical University of Munich, University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Seoul National University Hospital, and national labs. Governance combines guidance from IBM Quantum program managers, technical steering committees similar to those at Apache Software Foundation projects, and community-elected coordinators mirroring structures used by Linux Foundation projects and Kubernetes Steering Committee. Periodic renewal, code of conduct adherence, and measurable outreach metrics determine continuance, while partnerships with funding bodies like NSF, European Research Council, Horizon Europe, UK Research and Innovation, Japan Science and Technology Agency, and NSERC influence program activities.

Community Activities and Impact

Activities include running workshops, hackathons, curriculum development, textbook contributions, and public lectures at venues such as Royal Institution, Royal Society, Smithsonian Institution, Science Museum (London), Exploratorium, Liberty Science Center, Perimeter Institute Public Lectures, and university outreach programs. Advocates contribute to open-source codebases, produce Jupyter notebooks, publish tutorials on GitHub Pages, and support reproducible research submitted to arXiv and preprint servers. Impact metrics appear in citations, adoption in industry proofs-of-concept by firms like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Barclays, BlackRock, Bloomberg L.P., McKinsey & Company, BCG, Bain & Company, and incorporation into graduate courses at leading universities, and into governmental advisory discussions at bodies like NIST and European Commission panels.

Notable Advocates and Contributions

Prominent advocates have included researchers and educators affiliated with MIT Media Lab, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Caltech's Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, Bell Labs, AT&T Labs, Siemens Quantum Lab, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Facebook AI Research, Google Brain, and startups such as Zapata Computing, Rigetti, IonQ, Xanadu. Their contributions span published algorithms, community textbooks, workshop series, and widely used teaching materials integrated into courses at Coursera, edX, and university syllabi, plus open-source toolkits and benchmarking suites submitted to repositories and highlighted in proceedings of QCE (Quantum Computing for Everyone), QIP, APS March Meeting, NeurIPS, and ICML.

Category:Quantum computing organizations