IQuHack 2023 was a good experience for me. Despite finishing the event empty-handed, I guess participating was good enough.

Short Background

IQuHack is an event hosted by MIT. For this year’s event, they had two main categories ofr the hackathon. One each for the remote and on-site participants.

For the on-site participants, they had challenges that were tailored to different sponsors of IQuHack. They were:

  • Covalent x IBM Quantum
  • QuEra
  • Quantinuum
  • IonQ

As for remote participants like myself, we only had two:

  • Microsoft
  • IonQ

All participants had access to the Microsoft Azure and qBraid platforms where all our code will be tested.

My Experience

I can only join the Microsoft challenge, since IonQ’s challenge required platforms which are not able yet to those living here in the Philippines.

The Microsoft challenge tasked participants to rewrite code in Q# to minimize and optimize resources, when ran through a quantum computer.

I opened all the notebooks, Only attempted to solve the first four, and only submitted the first two.

The biggest reason for me performing bad in this hackathons is the fact that we had to use Q# only, a language I have no experience in.

I only had experience in Qiskit, and the last time I coded using Qiskit was during my Introduction to Quantum Computing days, where I was forced to do it to pass.

While I had a team, which I was psuedo-sorted to along with a few people who answered the same Google form before the challenge launches, it was kind of awkward for me to start a conversation even if I was the most talkative on our Slack channel. We were “team_11”. Looking back, I wish I had asked the only knowledgeable person in our team about Q# some more questions, because I may have actually contributed something.

We were 5 in a team. The other one didn’t respond once in our slack channel, the other two was kind of active during the opening times, inactive for the majority of the hackathon, and popped up when it was submission time. And then the other one, who was named Ritu,actually made submissions on the qBraid platform (which also hosts the leaderboard… we were always second to the last :) )

I kind of rode her coattails as well, because her submission was the only submission our team made. And so even if it looks like a team effort on GitHub, in reality it was only her submission.

I made some effort though, I even forked the repository as instructed, it was just that I don’t know what I was supposed to do!

Another facepalm-worthy I did was submitting the exact Jupyter Notebook without any changes, and then feeling happy everytime Ricky Young, who was operating the auto grader in qBraid and updating the Slack about each team’s submission results, says that our team’s latest submission was a success and did not incur a Timeout error. Little did he know, I did nothing on those notebooks.

Hey, even if hackathons like IQuHack do workshops on their YouTube or Twitch channels about the technologies that will be used in their challenges, the time given is just not enough for mastery of the tech. Even if they saay during marketing of these hackathons that,

“There is no coding or programming experience required, but encouraged/recommended” The challenges will always require you to have experience. See the last 3 words? Yep. —

What’s Next?

Okay, so apprently there’s something called a QC Hackathon Grand Slam in the qc community. It entails joining a series of three hackathons, and winning each of them as you progress by each one:

  1. It starts off with qBraID HAQS, which might be the easiest one, judging from the grand slam order. It is also the longest one, spanning two weeks. The last iteration (October 21, 2022 - November 5, 2022) involved a prize thaa enables winners to participate in IQuHack.

  2. IQuHack. Last iteration ran from January 27, 2022 - January 29, 2022. I can’t compare the difficulty because this is the only one I have entered so far. Also the shortest timeframe. Hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which makes it prestigious and competitive. If I am not mistaken, one of the authors of a very famous quantum computing textbook teaches there. Not sure if that is Nielsen or Chuang. So yeah, pretty big deal.

  3. NYUAD Hackathon for Social Good in the Arab World: Focusing on Quantum Computing (QC). Probably the most prestigious because even the participation has to be by invitation, and is held on-site in NYU Abu Dhabi. Runs this year from April 27, 2023 - May 1, 2023. I have seen the past years’ participants, their profiles, the teams formed, and these teams’ submissions. Just mind-blowing. They are basically forming startups there in a span of 4 days! Not just that, but the participants are either Graduate students, or really really skilled and experienced college students. Even each teams’ mentors are either high-level company officers, respected quantum physics researchers, or a skilled member of the academe. Just wow.

It is crazy that quantum computing is not even popular yet in the general programming community. Here, the OneQuantum Philippines Community only has 34 members, including myself. I am in a position to learn more about quantum computing because I have the opportunity to capitalize on the grassroots level of quantum technology education here in the Philippines. I will do my best and try participating in these hackathons in te future

If I am going to do my best, then I have to have build up some experience, right?

Well then, right after my loss in this year’s IQuHack, I will join QHACK 2023 which will happen from February 13 - 28, 2023. There are many categories such as the meme competition, puzzle competition and the raffle, but I am looking forward to the Coding Challenges and Open Hackathon. The scope is big, and prizes are huge. It is hosted and organized by Xanadu, another popular qc startup company today.

There are so many opportunities open in the quantum computing community, so many hackathons, researches, internships, and even certifications. Again, for the nth time, it all depends on the person how they will use that to their advantage.

I am one of those persons, so I will try to study some Q# or Qiskit, so I can at least submit something worthy, right? :)

Not to mention my forever delayed IT Automation with Python Google Certificate, my SEDS Philippines duties (Yes, I got accepted) and my CEATSG Junior Councilor duties (Yes, I got accepted.)

I see this as a challenge. I am lucky to have been given these opportunities so I will fight, bite, and scratch to make them worthy of my time and efforts.

More next time.