2021 Post-Event Overview

iQuHACK 2021, MIT's second annual quantum hackathon, had 219 participants (from 943 applicants) with 49 teams across 12 time zones, 29 countries, and 40 universities. What a weekend!

• QCB was the overall winner.
• QriKET won the gate-based division.
• Algorhythms won the annealing division.
• Hybrid-Daemons won the hybrid division.
• Team 47 won the IonQ challenge.
• patoLogic won the D-Wave challenge.

We would like to thank IonQ and D-Wave for providing the hardware and support during the hackathon. In addition we could not have done this without the sponsorship from Google, HRL Laboratories, Zapata, MIT's Center for Quantum Engineering, IBM-Q, and MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. We also appreciate the support of the Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at MIT. Finally, thank you to qBraid who provided an optional remote platform equipped with environments for all of our hardware sponsors. iQuHACK 2021 was presented by the Interdisciplinary Quantum Information Science and Engineering program (iQuISE, iquise.mit.edu); more information about the hackathon can be found at iquhack.mit.edu.

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2021 Instructions

Submit a new idea by opening a new issue

Keep in mind these ideas are open to the public and not regulated.

Projects GitHub Instructions

All teams will have a git repository at https://github.com/iQuHACK/2021_<team_name>.

Do NOT commit private credentials or API keys

Stick them in an environment file and add that file to your git ignore. If you need help with this, please reach out to us.

If you do accidentally push a commit with any sensitive information let us know ASAP so we can help fix the situation. It is not enough to simply remove the file in another commit.

Repositories will become public at the end of the hackathon

Workflow (remote development)

This is slightly easier if you don't want to spend any time installing packages locally.

qBraid has generously prepared a virtual environment with the above packages and dependencies installed as well as some tutorial jupyter notebooks. After you create an account, select the iQuHACK package and you’re ready to go!

1. Complete and submit the team formation form.
2. You will get an invitation to become a collaborator on your team's repository.
3. Make an account at https://account.qbraid.com/join
4. We are using learn.qbraid.com for iQuHACK. No need for an access key.
5. Launch the iQuHACK environment (top right).

To setup the repo:

1. In your home directory, select the "Clone Repo" icon (make sure you haven't navigated into "qbraid-tutorials", and if you have just navigate back to your home directory).

   

2. Grab the clone URL from github and paste it in. Make sure to use https unless you are planning to customize to use ssh keys.

3. Navigate into your newly cloned repository folder, then select the "Git" tab on the right.

   

4. First commit, you will need to enter your standard git config options if you haven't already.

5. push/pull are available from the git tab with arrows above your nav panel. If you have set it up to use https, you will have to enter your user/password each time.

   

Note, this is your own unix user account and if you prefer a different setup (e.g. using ssh keys to avoid having to enter your password each time), feel free to set it up that way! Let us know if you'd like help or you get stuck.

For questions/issues specifically about qBraid, you can contact them through email or slack.

• contact@qbraid.com
• #qbraid channel in our event's slack

Workflow (local development)

1. Complete and submit the team formation form.
2. You will get an invite to your repo. Clone your repository.
3. Begin hacking!
4. Before the submission deadline, make sure you push/merge your final work to the main branch. You will lose push permission right at the deadline.

Team Names

You can change your team's name at any point by contacting one of the staff through Slack or email iquhack@mit.edu. We will update your repo's name accordingly with the most recent submission.

After the event

After submission closes, we will remove your team's access to that repo and make it public. Feel free to fork it and keep working on it after the event!

Resources

Getting Started

We recommend using conda for your project. If you aren't familiar with it, once setup you barely have to interact with it! Checkout their installation instructions here.

We have seen some issues using python 3.8, so we recommend using Python 3.7. For example, if you want your environment named iQuHACK:

conda create -n iQuHACK python=3.7
pip install qiskit

To load this environment: conda activate iQuHACK.

If conda cannot be found (and you are on a unix-like system), you most likely have not initialized it during installing. You can do this by running the init script in the installation directory:

source <path to conda>/bin/activate
conda init zsh

Then you should be good to go. MacOS Catalina now uses zsh shell instead of bash, but put your appropriate shell name there.

iQuHACK

• iquhack.slack.com (check your email for invite link, or email iquhack@mit.edu)
• iQuHACK site

Resources

All of these can be found in jupyter notebooks already setup and ready to run in your qbraid account! If you haven't yet, make an account (see above).

• D-Wave Tutorials (qbraid-tutorials/Tutorials/[COMING SOON])
• ionQ Technology
• Qiskit Tutorials (qbraid-tutorials/Tutorials/ibm_tutorials/)
• Qiskit Examples
• Cirq Tutorials (qbraid-tutorials/Tutorials/google_tutorials/)
• Bracket (qbraid-tutorials/Tutorials/aws_tutorials/)