The Qiskit Community Summer Jam Brought Hackathon Energy To Hundreds At Home
By Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Senior Technical Writer, Qiskit
While perhaps missing the giant post-it notes and tables full of empty pizza boxes, hackathons are alive and well in the quantum computing community, even as social distancing orders remain in effect. Earlier this summer, the Qiskit Community Summer Jam managed to gather a crowd of physicists, coders, and even high schoolers from around the United States into Slack channels, video conferences, and Github pages to develop quantum computing applications using Qiskit.
Nearly 300 participants across four US regions competed in this year’s first Qiskit Community Summer Jam, a series of online hackathons that spanned from June 24 to July 1. Winning teams developed a quantum Bayesian circuit builder, monitored the effects of noise on a highly-entangled Gaussian wavefunction, simulated quantum systems that don’t thermally equillibriate, and generated educational analogies between quantum circuits and quantum optics — all in just a week. The event was an exciting opportunity to dive head-first into the world of quantum computing for all participants, and didn’t require 24 straight hours at a computer.
The Qiskit Community Summer Jam’s organizers strove to recreate the feeling of building and competing against friends at on-campus hackathons, only digitally. Teams of no more than five had to build and present their projects during the allotted time using Qiskit. Ultimately, the events’ purpose was, and will be, to enable students to learn about quantum computing while making new connections and growing their local quantum computing communities.
“I hope people gained the confidence to keep trying new things, both with Qiskit and in their education,” said Brian Ingmanson, Qiskit Education Community Manager. “How cool would it be if one day someone gets a job or internship because of a project they built during the Summer Jam?”
Teams first worked on teaching themselves how to program with Qiskit and install all of the required software. Some had played around with quantum computing and Qiskit in the past, but others were brand new to the field. Paola Frunzio, a rising high school junior from the Hopkins School in Connecticut, organized her team with classmates Nana Dondorful-Amos and Amy Zhang who were simply interested in the opportunity to learn about quantum computing and computer programming. They were joined by Ph.d Student Klaara Viisanen at Aalto University in Finland who had recently moved to New Haven, and Bruce Seymour, co-founder of a New Haven-based app development company called MEA Mobile.
“At first it was a little hard to keep up, since we didn’t have as much coding experience as Klaara and Bruce,” Zhang explained. But the whole team was new to quantum computing, and used the opportunity to host video learning sessions where they’d teach one another the algorithms that they’d learned. “All of us were in a way contributing the same amount,” Zhang said.
Working together remotely posed unique challenges that don’t crop up at typical hackathons when you’re locked together in rooms. Teams used apps like Skype and Zoom to organize. While in some cases friends from the same university quantum computing clubs tackled problems they had familiarity with, in others, teammates were spread far across the world. The Summer Jam’s rules required that all participants either lived in or attended a school in their designated region, but one of the Ube Pancake team’s members was in China during the contest period.
“There was a 12-hour time difference,” said Catherine Liang, undergraduate at Duke. “We had to do our work during the daytime and then switch it over to him so that he could work during his time.” While this limited their face time, the team still netted an honorable mention in the North Carolina division for their quantum deep learning project.
There were more typical hackathon challenges as well, like simply getting the code up and running. “There were a couple of times where the code didn’t work, and we’d be up until 11 trying different things,” said Khallil Guy, a summer intern at Fermilab and undergraduate at Fisk University from the 16QubitsAndADream team. “But we’d just come back the next day to give it another go and eventually find another solution.” After all, participating in a remote hackathon spread out over a week, rather than 24 hours, has some benefits.
“I slept a lot better than I would have at a normal hackathon,” said Ryan Levy, graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and member of the Midwest Division winning team QuarantineQbits.
But the week of work paid off. Teams left with a newfound knowledge of quantum computing and the ability to produce new tools with Qiskit, plus new friends and connections to other quantum developers in their area — all without having to leave their house. Some will even continue to pursue their projects. And of course, four lucky winning teams went home with $500. Not that winning was the main goal or anything.
“I just had a fun week with my friends,” said Madeline Hunt, a recent graduate in Geophysics from UNC Chapel Hill, and member of Quantum Ducks who won the North Carolina division. “I think we were all enthusiastic and motivated and were able to accomplish all the goals we laid out at our first meeting.”
These were just the first four Summer Jams, but planning for events in Denver, London, and Dublin is currently underway. You can even host your own — the only requirement is 40 participants in your area interested in trying out Qiskit. Beginners and experts are both encouraged to join.
Said Zhang: “For people who are interested in the field of quantum computing but don’t feel like they have the coding abilities, I say just go for it.”
Successful Summer Jams have at least 40 driven participants who are ready to build something new. If you’re interested in hosting a Summer Jam in your area, apply here to lead the way.
