Share your ideas with the quantum world at QHack's famous open hackathon!
This year's hackathon includes new sponsored challenges, each with unique prizes. You can submit your project to multiple prizes as long as it is eligible for them.
See below for challenge topics and additional eligibility criteria. Complete details for prize eligibility is available in the 2023 QHack Terms & Conditions.
To submit your team's entry for any of these prizes, you should follow these steps:
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Create a repository with your project.
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Create an issue in this repository following this template.
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If you are applying for a power-up, indicate this by adding the
PowerUplabel to the issue you created in step 2 (alternatively, type[power-up]at the beginning of the issue name). -
If, on the other hand, you are submitting your work for the final project — not a power-up — you must add the
Donelabel to the issue created in step 2 (alternatively,[Done]). If you submitted your work previously for a power-up, create a new issue for your final project submission — do not reuse the power-up submission.
In the template you will be asked to add a link to your repository. In this case, instead of sending a link to the main branch, you should send the link to the commit at that time.
Here, I share with you a gif in which we can see how to link to the last commit.
Once your screen shows the files associated with the commit, copy the link that appears above in the browser.
And that's it — as easy as that!
Although there will be a specific set of hackathon topics, within a topic, the choice is up to you (unless the topic specifies otherwise). You could brainstorm a new idea with your team, or start from one of the following seed ideas:
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Implement an idea from the quantum literature — or from one of our guest speaker presentations — with code.
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Create a self-contained tutorial or demonstration of an idea from quantum computing. See the PennyLane Community page to see what we're looking for!
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Extend one of the QHack Coding Challenges in a novel or interesting way.
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Repurpose one of the PennyLane demos to run on a quantum hardware device.
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Submit a Pull Request to an open-source library with a new feature.
All entries are subject to the QHack Terms & Conditions.
NVIDIA/Cyxtera Technologies/Run:ai Power-Ups:
The twenty-four (24) teams with the most promising preliminary hackathon projects using NVIDIA GPUs will each be awarded time on an A100 GPU.
IBM Quantum & PINQ² Power-Ups:
The eight (8) teams with the most promising preliminary hackathon projects will be awarded three (3) hours dedicated reservation hours on a 16-qubit QPU.
Amazon Braket Hackathon Power-Ups:
The fifteen (15) teams with the most promising preliminary hackathon projects will each be awarded USD $2,000 in AWS credits.
To qualify for the power-ups awarded for the most promising preliminary hackathon projects, you must complete and submit the form available here by Thursday, February 23, 2023, at 5:00 p.m. EST.
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February 21: The hackathon has not yet started but a power-up will be given to those teams with the best scores in the coding challenges (details to be confirmed).
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February 22: Hackathon topics are announced! Time to get to work.
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February 23: If you want to get a power-up don't forget to make a partial submission with the
PowerUplabel. At 5PM ET, we will no longer accept submissions for power-ups. -
February 24: The teams that have uploaded the best projects will receive the power-ups.
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February 28: Time is up! The deadline is 5pm ET, so make sure you have everything ready in advance to avoid last minute problems.
In this hackathon you are asked to create a program capable of automating the creation of a specific type of plot or visualization using code. These plots should illustrate a system, describe a quantum computing concept, or even generate quantum-inspired art automatically. Beyond the Bloch sphere, how can we represent more than one qubit? What about a way to visualize entanglement? Or a method to depict a qutrit? Visualization is fundamental to understand everything we do! Look for a topic and get to work!
First Prize:
Sponsored by: Atom Computing
- One-person two-part trip.
- Part 1: Office in Berkeley, California, USA to meet their team.
- Part 2: Office in Boulder to meet their team and tour the facility.
- Paid Expenses: Flight and accommodation
Second Prize:
Sponsored by: Rigetti
- Early access to Ankaa™, Rigetti’s fourth generation 84-qubit system available in Q3 2023.
- Up to four sets of Apple® AirPods®.
Data visualization is one of the most powerful problem solving tools we have. A glance at the right graph can suggest an elegant solution to a problem from what would otherwise be a lifeless table of numbers. When Graphs are a Matter of Life and Death is an engaging article describing the history of data visualization and how it revolutionized the way we solve problems. The visualization and plotting challenge is a great opportunity to hone your data visualization skills so you too can leverage the power of graphs to solve the world's problems.
Third Prize:
Sponsored by: Strangeworks
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One year software license to the Strangeworks Enterprise level product with USD $3,000 in hardware credits.
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The winners will get the opportunity to work with Strangeworks Director of Application development for up to 15 hours to develop and launch an application on the Strangeworks platform.
We want to see you do everything you can think of. Good luck!
One of the main applications of quantum computing is the calculation of the ground state energy of specific molecules. As we calculate, we always work with approximations and models that simplify the real-world system, but move us away from the empirical results obtained in the laboratory. In this hackathon we will face a molecule a bit larger than normal:
First Prize:
Sponsored by: IBM Quantum & PINQ2
- Block of 10 hours access on a 127-qubit Eagle processor.
Here are some ideas: use the Circuit Knitting Toolbox to simulate and calculate energy states of this large molecule, use the error mitigation and error suppression methods built into the Qiskit Runtime to produce high quality calculations of molecular energy states and vibrational energies.
Second Prize:
Sponsored by: QunaSys
- Two on-site internship positions for one month in Tokyo (full-time). The salary will be 300,000 JPY plus flight and accommodation.
- Each team member will have the choice between either one Nintendo Switch™ Console or one set of Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones (maximum 4 electronic items in total).
As inspiration, you can check out qulacs on GitHub, QURI Parts documentation, or QURI Parts tutorials.
Third Prize:
Sponsored by: qBraid
- Remote internship for 6 weeks with a salary of $6,000 USD (one spot).
- Up to three sets of Apple® AirPods® for team members not participating in the internship.
This review article on variational quantum eigensolvers for quantum chemistry covers many new technique that still need to be implemented.If you are looking to write code for some new techniques, you will find this paper helpful. A bonus tip: there has been good progress in fermion to qubit mappings in the past year. But, which fermionic encoding is most resilient to errors in NISQ devices is still unknown. It would be wonderful if people could look into this problem. With good enough progress, this could lead to a nice paper.
As you may already know, one of the big bets in quantum is hybrid computing, in which we combine the potential of quantum and classical computers to obtain results we would not be able to achieve with classical computing alone. This field is ripe for big, bold new ideas, which is where you come in! This hackathon asks you to look for new problems to which hybrid computing could be applied, think of new, interesting QML models, push the limits of hybrid programming and show us what it can do.
First Prize:
Sponsored by: Covalent
- Up to four Apple Watches®
Curious about the possibility of using both quantum and classical computing to create a time machine? Check out this PennyLane demo and learn how to use Covalent and Pennylane to dance between classical and quantum parts in your code.
Second Prize:
Sponsored by: IQM
- Collaboration between members of the winning team and IQM to support advancement of the winning team's work.
- Up to 4 tickets for Superconducting Qubits and Algorithms Conference 2023 (in Munich). It includes a travel budget of up to €2,400 to be split among the whole team.
We are always on the lookout for genuine hybrid algorithms that have both heavy classical and quantum loads, as examples of workflows that could make real use of a large classical computation. Typical variational algorithms tend to have very limited classical computing needs, so it would be interesting to see something that uses a VQA only as a sub-routine, or even does something completely different.
Third Prize:
Sponsored by: QuEra
- Up to four reMarkable tablets with Marker and Folio
- Atomic Certificate of Victory
Preparing large and entangled quantum states is a main challenge in quantum computing — at QuEra, we've got you covered for both! As your duty, should you choose to accept it: explore methods to optimize Hamiltonian parameters classically. For example, try to prepare a Z2 state (alternated 0101) in a line, while overcoming the limitations of adiabatic protocols. Here are a few ideas that have not yet been demonstrated with neutral atoms, but should be possible: [1], [2]
Since last year’s QHack we’ve witnessed many breakthroughs and groundbreaking, original ideas in the field of quantum computing. Today is the day to discover the potential of newly published research and realize it. In this hackathon we ask you to find scientific papers that have been published after February 2nd, 2022. You can try to replicate their results, extend them or even contribute new ideas to advance the presented research. Let's show what a good year it has been!
First Prize:
Sponsored by: Classiq
- One full-time paid remote internship. This will include a weekend trip to the Classiq offices in Tel Aviv. The total budget will be $5,000 USD.
- Alternatively, if more than one team member qualifies for the internship, the USD $5,000 salary and travel expenses will be split among the team members.
- Alternatively, team members may choose to forfeit the internship and instead opt for physical prizes (e.g., electronics) totalling up to USD $5,000.
If you're not sure where to start, visit Classiq Academia.
Second Prize:
Sponsored by: BEIT
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One person trip to meet BEIT's team for an on-site research experience and tour their office in Kraków, Poland. Paid Expenses: Flight and accommodation.
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Up to three sets of electronics (e.g., Apple® AirPods®, tablet, laptop) valued at approximately USD $750 for team members not participating in the trip to Kraków, Poland.
We encourage you to seek inspiration in quantum algorithms for the vibrational motion calculations. With PennyLane you may want to explore the latest progress in the newly emerging field of simulating the vibrational dynamics of molecules with quantum computers, apply or extend some of these newer methods. Enjoy!
Third Prize:
Sponsored by: Multiverse Computing
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One full-time, paid, on-site internships in San Sebastian, Spain. The duration is six months with a salary of EUR 1200 net and relocation package of up to EUR 2000
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For team members not participating in the internship, up to three sets of Apple® AirPods®.
Check out the D-Wave case study with Multiverse Computing or apply for our open job listings and summer internships.
We keep hearing that quantum computers are subject to noise and that we are in the NISQ era. Even now we are still far from being able to deal well with noise, so the goal of this hackathon will be to improve our faults. Find new error correcting codes? Optimize the complication of processing certain operators? You are free to choose your own project, so long as you keep one idea in mind: facilitate the execution of quantum circuits subjected to noise as best as you can.
First Prize:
Sponsored by: Nord Quantique
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$5,000 USD paid one person trip to meet the Nord Quantique team and tour the ecosystem in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.
- Alternatively, the approximate USD $5,000 travel budget may be shared across all team members to meet the Nord Quantique team and tour the ecosystem in Sherbrooke, Quebéc, Canada. In addition, Nord Quantique pays for accommodations and meals
Hey hackers, Nord Quantique is proud to sponsor this Hackathon. We are excited to see how many qubits you can simulate in your numerical experiments. 👀⚛️🚀💻
Second Prize:
Sponsored by: Entropica Labs
- Full-time remote internship for 3 months at USD $1,500 per month.
- Alternatively, if more than one team member qualifies for the internship, the USD $1,500 per month salary will be split among the team members.
- Apple® AirPods® 3rd Generation (up to 3) and Entropica T-shirts (up to 3).
QAOA is a NISQ-friendly algorithm with modest resource requirements. However, when compiled for execution on a target quantum computer with limited connectivity, heavy overheads can arise due to the need for SWAP operations. Minimizing the number of these additional gates is essential to extract the best performance possible. Try designing a solution to optimize the SWAP networks specifically for QAOA circuits, making your computations more resource-effective with OpenQAOA — some ideas here.
Third Prize:
Sponsored by: AQT
- Block of two hours access to AQT's QPU over the cloud.
AQT wishes you all success and good luck! Here are some sources of inspiration for the hackathon: [1], [2], [3], [4]
NVIDIA Challenge
Fault-tolerant quantum computers are coming, but we still have a lot of work to do to develop useful algorithms, and identify what applications will benefit the most from FTQCs. When Quantum Computers are in production they will be co-processors to GPUs. NVIDIA cuQuantum and QODA both enable you to get ready for tomorrow, today by allowing you run super fast quantum circuit simulations at scale and integrate classical workflows seamlessly with quantum processes. Leverage cuQuantum and/or QODA in your workflow to do something impactful for the quantum computing field. This could be new quantum kernels for a hybrid quantum classical application, research into noisy simulations or error correction codes, integrations with your favorite framework, or maybe leveraging approximate tensor networks algorithms to find ways to do more with less.
Prizes:
- 1st place: Up to four Geforce RTX 4090s GPUs (one per team member)
- 2nd place: Up to four Geforce RTX 3090s GPUs (one per team member)
- 3rd place: Up to four Geforce RTX 3080s GPUs (one per team member)
NVIDIA Resources
- Docs
- Getting started
- NVIDIA/Cyxtera/Run:ai channel on the QHack Discord server
- cuQuantum appliance docs
- custatevec docs
- cutensornet docs
- cuQuantum Python docs
- GitHub and OSS
- Circuit converter (takes a Cirq or Qiskit circuit and converts it to a tensor network)
- Circuit converter samples
- Benchmark suite
- Guidance on linking wheels for integrations
- General Python Samples
- General C Samples
- Approximate Tensor Network Samples
Useful blog posts
- Lightning Fast Simulations with PennyLane and the NVIDIA cuQuantum SDK
- Orquestra Integration with NVIDIA cuQuantum
- NVIDIA cuQuantum and QODA Adoption Accelerates
- Braket-PennyLane-cuQuantum blog
- Scaling Quantum Circuit Simulations with cuTensorNet
- Accelerating Quantum Circuit Simulations with cuStateVec
- Best-in-class multinode cuQuantum Appliance
Anything that you would have liked done better? Product Feedback for cuQuantum, QODA, Run:AI, Was there something missing that you expected to be included? If you could include any of these answers in the project, it will be very useful to us.
Amazon Braket Challenge
Using Amazon Braket simulators or quantum processing units (QPUs), implement a quantum algorithm of your choice for a particular use case. Need inspiration? Check out last year’s Amazon Braket challenge winners, here. Use cases for social good is strongly encouraged, but not required. Several application areas which may be of interest are as follows, but don’t feel limited to these topics:
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Climate change (e.g. optimizing the power grid, simulating novel materials for carbon capture or high temperature superconductivity, etc.)
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Healthcare (e.g. simulating chemical reactions for drug development, predicting RNA folding, optimizing hospital bed allocation, etc.)
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Manufacturing (e.g. optimizing an automotive assembly-line, minimizing carbon output for a factory)
Prizes:
- For each of the Top 3 winning teams:
- Amazon Braket swag
- Mini-mentorship meeting with an Amazon Scholar in Quantum Technologies
- USD $10,000 in AWS hardware credits
- Featured in a blog post on the AWS Quantum Technologies channel
- USD $50 Amazon gift card for each member of the team (maximum twelve participants in total)
Amazon Braket resources:
- example notebooks
- documentation
- blog posts:
- Simulating quantum circuits
- Noise in quantum computing
- Introducing the Qiskit provider for Amazon Braket
- Suppressing errors with dynamical decoupling using pulse control
- Optimization of robot trajectory planning with nature-inspired and hybrid quantum algorithms
- Optimization with a Rydberg atom-based quantum processor
How to get support for Amazon Braket:
- Quickest response: #🕸aws channel (amazon “web” services — get it? ;)) on the QHack Discord server
- Live help: Office Hours voice channel: #aws-office-hours
- Email help: qhack-support@amazon.com
- Braket forum: re:Post - Amazon Braket
- General quantum questions: https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/
We are excited to see what you build combining your ingenuity, PennyLane, and Amazon Braket during the hackathon. We invite you to stay in touch with AWS following QHack via the AWS Quantum Computing Blog. Best of luck! The Amazon Braket team
The QHack organizing team will grade every Open Hackathon submission based on three criteria:
- Scientific and/or technical ability demonstrated.
- Overall quality of presentation.
- Depth of use of the quantum computing software and hardware stack.
Specific Open Hackathon Challenges may be judged by that Challenge's sponsors. The QHack organizing team will provide the sponsor with a ranked list of the top candidate projects that are eligible for that Challenge. The final winner will be chosen by the sponsor from this list of top candidates.
Good luck!