Columbians Hack Their Way to Quantum Victory

On Saturday, Sept. 28, undergraduate teams from Columbia, New York University (NYU), and City College of New York (CCNY) presented quantum computing solutions they developed at NYC HAQ, the first tri-university hackathon in New York City. 

Columbians led two of the three winning teams — including the overall winner — and 10 students received a $200 award and a prize from the challenge sponsor. 

Held at locations across all three campuses and online, the event invited 10 teams to address challenges focused on cybersecurity and communication, healthcare and chemical simulation, or finance. 

Justin Beltran, a senior in the School of General Studies and a member of one of the winning teams, said the hackathon was a great overall experience to meet students from other universities and put the quantum concepts he’s been learning at Columbia all together. 

“I’ve always been drawn to the strange world of quantum mechanics,” he recalled, “and as a math and computer science student, quantum computing acts as an intersection of these two subjects. The hackathon was a great way to explore the field further.” 

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Solving problems in finance and chemistry

Beltran’s Columbian-based team, which dubbed themselves Lion-Q, took on the finance challenge sponsored by qBraid, which provides the cloud-based platform for quantum computing that the student teams used for the hackathon. The Lion-Q team used quantum computing algorithms to optimize a financial portfolio for comparison against classical optimization models. 

The overall winning team, Team One, included students from both Columbia and CCNY who tackled quantum chemistry in a challenge sponsored by SandboxAq, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that combines quantum technologies with artificial intelligence and helped organize the hackathon. Team One focused on simulating the electronic structure of dynamics of lithium hydride (LiH), a simple yet scientifically interesting molecule that serves as a benchmark for comparing different computational approaches in quantum chemistry. To use these algorithms, a mix of classical and quantum, with larger and more complex molecules, they created a meta-optimizing algorithm; this allowed the team to simulate larger molecules on limited hardware.

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Supporting quantum education

Yonara Anastacio Cubas, a junior studying computer science at Columbia College and a member of Team One, joined the hackathon to deepen her understanding of quantum computing and to connect with others in the field.

“Throughout the event, I had the chance to listen to inspiring speakers and meet many amazing people who are passionate about quantum. One of the most challenging aspects was understanding complex concepts that I had not seen before, but the collective effort of our team made all the difference. Go Team 1!” she said. 

NYC HAQ was jointly organized by Columbia University, NYU, and CCNY as an opportunity for undergraduate students to deepen their understanding of quantum technology and to get hands-on experience with quantum programming. The hackathon began online on September 8, with undergraduate students from the three universities learning the ins and outs of quantum programming in training sessions provided by the quantum education non-profit qWorld.

Top performers on qWorld’s assignments were then invited to participate in the hackathon itself, which kicked off at CCNY on Sept. 21 with a series of quantum lectures and training sessions with the qBraid quantum programming software. The students were then sorted into ten teams, who convened again on Sept. 22 at Columbia to choose the quantum programming challenge they wished to tackle. 

In addition to working on their quantum projects, the students had the opportunity to attend an array of talks by quantum computing researchers from academia and industry. For example, they learned about post-quantum cryptography from Oded Regev, a professor at NYU, and quantum algorithms for finance from JP Morgan researcher Romina Yalovetzky.

With the support of mentors, which included graduate students from the three universities as well as industry representatives from companies including SandboxAQ, Amazon, and Quantinuum, the teams spent the following week collaborating on their solutions, which they presented to a team of quantum industry and academic judges at NYU on Sept. 28. 

“This was an exciting event that was not only great for our students, but also for the broader NYC quantum community,” said Henry Yuen, Srivani Family Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia Engineering and co-organizer of the event. “The judges were blown away by the quality of the projects and the presentations, and there were also invited talks from academia and industry that the students found very inspiring. We are incredibly proud of all of our students.” 

Details about NYC HAQ and additional multimedia, including video recordings of the lectures and presentations, can be found at https://nyc-haq.org/.