In brief, US National Quantum Initiative (NQI) leaders met with IEEE representatives in DC August, 2018. This meeting informally tasked IEEE with supporting the new quantum activities (quantum 2.0?) by supporting quantum engineering.
The anticipated formation of QED-C was mentioned and IEEE was informed that there would be a role for professional societies.
There were a variety of subsequent activities, two noteworthy ones will be mentioned. The NQI leads attended an “IEEE Quantum” kickoff meeting on August 31, 2018 at Georgia Tech and there was a subsequent joint meeting the last day of April 31-May 2, 2019 in Gaithersburg MD.
QED-C started to sign up official members, initially with a letter of intent (LOI). However, the first members were industrial/corporate members and the form of agreement was not appropriate. On November 25, 2020, QED-C send us a “cross-participation agreement” that they had signed with another party more or less a professional society. This agreement did several rounds of back-and-forth, eventually being signed by John Przybysz as CSC President.
QED-C is still assessing the agreement.
If the agreement is signed in current form, it will open a high-level communications channel between IEEE and QED-C. There is also a provision for some cross-participation of IEEE members in QED-C activities and vice versa.