Quantum Computing Hack Day

Quantum computers have the potential to solve certain problems dramatically faster than conventional computers, with applications in areas such as machine learning, finance, drug discovery and cryptography. Try out your quantum programming skills at our hackathon, where you'll have the chance to run your quantum algorithms on both quantum simulators and a real quantum computer. Experience helps but is not required - our experts will teach you the basics!

Technical details: You will be expected to bring your own laptop and have experience of coding. Coding experience of Python is desirable but not necessary. Knowledge of quantum computing and quantum chemistry not required. We will provide example code and help on the day, so no prior quantum programming experience is required!

Hosted by: dividiti, River Lane Research and ThoughtWorks.

Timing: Please aim to arrive between 9:30 and 10:00 for registration and getting tea/coffee etc and talks will start at about 10:00, then 30 minute lunch break from 12:30pm to 1pm and finishing at around 5pm.

On the day please bring your laptop. It may be that you will be working in teams, in which case you may not use it, but you should bring it if you can.

The food on the day will be a mix of meat and vegetarian pizzas. If you have any other dietary requirements please let us know on the day and we will provide money for your lunch (within reason) so long as you can provide a receipt.

We are excited to announce IBM are providing hackathon participants priority access to their Quantum Experience machines (including real quantum devices!) for the day!

To ensure you fully benefit from this amazing experience, please follow simple instructions at https://github.com/ctuning/ck-qiskit to install Collective Knowledge and QISKit. (The instructions are currently available for Linux and macOS, but we are working on instructions for Windows too). If you have a Windows machine please install a linux vm on it so you can run the kit (e.g. using https://itsfoss.com/install-linux-in-virtualbox/ )

Once you've done that, please also run one more command:
$ ck benchmark program:qiskit-demo --repetitions=1 --env.CK_IBM_BACKEND=ibmq_qasm_simulator --cmd_key=quantum_coin_flip --record_uoa=quantum_coin_flip --record --record_repo=remote-ck --record_experiment_repo=ck-quantum-hackathons
We would appreciate if you could give this a try over this weekend (Sat 29th and Sun 30th Sept) and by Wednesday 3 October at the latest. If you experience any problems, please open a GitHub issue at https://github.com/ctuning/ck-qiskit/issues, and we will try to help!

Numbers: We are now limiting RSVPs to 70 (it was previously, incorrectly increased to 90 for a short period). People will only gradually come off the waitlist as the RSVPs go below 70.

Minimum age: 18