Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance - Technical Advisory Council (TAC) Meeting 14 January, 2026

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Voting Representative Attendance (Alphabetical by 1st name)

Premier Member Representatives

  • Brian Jarvis, Amazon Web Services Inc. [TAC Chair]
  • Norman Ashley, Cisco (OQS Rep)
  • Sophie Schmieg, Google
  • Michael Maximilien, IBM
  • Yarkin Doroz, NVIDIA

### Project Representatives

  • Matthias Kannwischer, TCR (PQCP Rep)
  • Andreas Schade, IBM (CBOMkit Rep)

Non-Voting Representative Attendance

Member Companies

  • Joe Livingston, IBM

LF Staff

  • Christina Harter
  • Hart Montgomery
  • Tomaz Sedaj

Other Attendees

  • Aditya Koranga, NgKore [TAC Vice Chair]

Meeting Agenda

  • CH: 2026 Summer mentorship Call for Mentors
  • CH: 2026 TAC & TCR election timeline
  • CH: Cisco <> PQCA Meetup Event
  • CH: Intro to New Ecosystem Manager (Tomaz)
  • Action Items review
  • Blog post published
  • OQS Health and Maturity metric update
  • PQCP Growth Plan progress check-in
  • Training material progress check-in

Discussion & Updates

Introduction of 1st Time Attendees

No new attendees. Brian (TAC Chair) was out due to scheduling conflict and Aditya (TAC Vice Chair) was unwell, so Christina led the discussion.

Call for Mentors - Summer Mentorship Program

Christina announced the call for mentors for the 2026 Summer Mentorship Program will be opening on February 2nd. All project proposals can be submitted as an issue on GitHub (template will be provided) so TAC members can see and review easily. All info can be found on the PQCA Mentorship wiki page

CALL FOR MENTORS

  • February 2 - March 13: Community members submit mentorship project proposals
  • March 16 - March 27: Mentorship project proposal review by Technical Advisory Council (mentors or proposal submitters may be asked to clarify or address questions raised by the TAC)

APPLICATION PROCESS

  • March 30 - May 8: Mentee application period on LFX Mentorship
  • May 11 - May 22: Mentee application review and applicant interview
  • May 25 - May 29: Selected mentee notifications
  • June 1 - August 28: Mentorship period

2026 Elections

Christina walked through the 2026 seats up for election and the 2026 election timeline.

2026 Seats up for Election

Term: April 1, 2026 - March 31, 2027

  • Governing Board
    • 2 seats: Chairperson & Treasurer
  • General Member Representative
    • 1 seat; sits on Governing Board
  • Technical Advisory Council
    • 2 seats: Chairperson (sits on Governing Board) & Vice Chair
  • Technical Community Representative
    • 1 seat; sits on Governing Board

2026 Election Timeline

Monday, February 23 Call for nominations begins
Thursday, March 12 End of nomination period
Friday, March 13 Voting begins
Thursday, March 19 End voting period, 23:59 UTC
Monday, March 23 Winners announced
Week of March 23 Onboarding of all new representatives
Wednesday, March 25 Newly elected GB reps invited to join GB meeting as guest
Wednesday, April 1 Newly elected representatives begin their term.

Cisco Event

Christina gave everyone an update on the Cisco event co-hosted with PQCA. The Meetup Event will livestreamed (with live watch parties at Cisco offices in Milan, Zurich, Munich and Copenhagen) on February 3rd at 9:00-11:00am EST / 15:00-17:00 CET and registration is free.

Intro to New Ecosystem Manager

Christina introduced Tomaz Sedaj to the group, who will be PQCA’s new Ecosystem Manager. Tomaz introduced himself as a current ecosystem manager at LF Decentralized Trust, discussing his role in onboarding members and supporting business development.

New Blog Post on PQCP Mentorship

Christina mentioned a recent blog post published by Matthias and his mentee about their mentorship experience.

Training Material Progress Check-in

Hart is in the process of scheduling a recurring meeting with proposed subject matter experts and the LF Training team with the first meeting possibly being this Friday and welcomed anyone to join. Norman asked for Hart to add him to the participant list.

Project Updates

OQS (Norman):

  • Norman mentioned the need to discuss project health metrics in the next OQS meeting. Norman mentioed TSC Chair and Vice Chair nominations are currently in progress.

PQCP (Matthias):

  • mlkem-native: All x86 assembly is now verified using HOL-Light, including the NTTs and rejection sampling; this was done by Hanno’s colleagues at AWS @jargh @dkostic.
  • mldsa-native: Some work has been merged on reducing the memory consumption, but more work left to make it more suitable for memory-constrained devices.
  • mldsa-native: Completed integration into OpenTitan: [crypto] ML-DSA (FIPS 204) signature implementation zerorisc/expo#184.
  • mldsa-native & mlkem-native: @davidchisnall started using mldsa-native and mlkem-native for demoing PQC on CHERIoT: https://github.com/CHERIoT-Platform/cheriot-pqc/.
  • mldsa-native: TF-PSA-Crypto (formerly Mbed-TLS) started integration of mldsa-native: Integrate mldsa-native Mbed-TLS/TF-PSA-Crypto#628.
  • Liam Fisher @f15hr started his mentorship last week.

CBOMkit (Andreas):

  • TSC started to work: https://github.com/cbomkit/tsc/; New member voted in to TSC (Aditya).
  • New repo (CBOM generation pipeline): https://github.com/cbomkit/cbomkit-pipeline for in-depth code analysis and dependency scanning.

Next Steps / Action Items

Action Item Owner Status / Due Date
Bring up the topic of project health metrics and status in the next OQS meeting. Norman Next OQS Meeting
Inform the group of the outcomes of the OQS2 chair, vice chair, and PQ code package liaison elections. Norman After Elections
Send Hart the link to David Chisnell’s blog post on Chariot integration and ask if he would be willing to cross-post it on the PQCA blog. Matthias Before next meeting
Reach out to David Chisnell about the possibility of cross-posting his Chariot integration blog post on the PQCA blog. Hart Before next meeting
Submit the upcoming CBOMkit Pipeline blog post via the new blog submission process. Andreas/Katerina/Finn Before next meeting
Add Norman to the training material email list and schedule/coordinate the training material course discussion meeting. Hart Before training meeting

Adjourned: 7:28am PT.