Quantum Science and Technology Hackathon

Quantum Science and Technology Banner

About the Quantum Science and Technology Hackthon - Design of the Hackathon

Among the many quantum related activities supported this year, IEEE is proud to have been a sponsor for the Quantum Science and Technology Hackathon (QSTH 2022). The Hackathon was designed as an attempt to stir the Quantum Ecosystem and enable people to think and implement new ideas/projects in Quantum. The aim was to create startups from scratch and also provide a platform for projects to move forward. The Hackathon started on the 15th of August 2022 and the final presentation and Winners selection happened on the 18th of November 2022.

The Hackathon was conducted in 3 phases:

The full timeline for all 3 phases, beginning with launch of the hackathon in August 2022, and ending with the wrap-up in November is shown below.

 QSTH hackathon 2022 timeline

Global Reach and Participant Stastics

Organised by the Quantum Ecosystems Technology Counil of India, the Quantum Science and Technology Hackathon attracted interantional participants from diverse backgrounds. Some interesting statistics related to the Hackathon are captured in the illustrations below.

With 1626 individual registrants, the QSTH  hackathon 2022 participants made up a large community.  The attached pic shows the distribution of people who registered from outside India, representing 24 additional countries. This distribution is especially interesting, since QSTH did not do much of an International Outreach for the Hackathon. As a value we are focussed on International Collaboration in Science and Technology and hence this picture shows us that it is possible to create a stronger collaboration base in Quantum from India.

Pie chart showing QSTH participants outside of India by location.

The various categories under which people could submit projects were Financial Service, Lifesciences, Quantum Security, Quantum Sensors and Communications and Others. As you can see in the charts there was a fair distribution of the various categories in the final shortlist. Although as you look at the Winners below , there is many more from the Lifesciences category . 

QSTH project distribution by topic

 

There was a fair amount of participation from experienced professionals, although students dominated the participation, with 72% of submissions coming from students, compared to 28% coming from professionals.

A comparison of QSTH participants: 72% students vs. 28% experienced professionals

 

The participartion from women was 27% and we had 2 women lead teams in the announced prizes.

QSTH participation by gender chart

 

Congratulations to the 2022 WSTH Winners!

QSTH winners

FIRST PRIZE - Team Name: SybilSys

Project: Qule - Exploring Chemical Infinities

Category: LifeSciences

Congratulations to Sabarikirishwaran Ponnambalam @Tarush Singh Sphoorthy Nadimpalli @Shubhang Mathur @Padmapriya Mohan

 

SECOND PRIZE: DeQuani from Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) - DRDO

Project:Design and Implementation of a Quantum safe cryptography algorithm using Polynomials to mitigate key-size based attacks

Category:Quantum Security

Congratulations! Ramkumar Ketti Ramachandran, Bhupendra Singh, Dr. Amanpreet Kaur, Taniya Hasija, Vaneeta Bhardwaj

 

THIRD PRIZE: AXIS. An all women team . One person from USA and one from Russia

Project:Compute the mean electric axis of the heart on IBM quantum hardware. Make the heart axis prediction using the DWave Quantum Annealers.

Category:Lifesciences

Congratulations! @Elena Suraeva @Olga Ok

 

SPECIAL MENTION1: Quantum Makers

Team from Tech Mahindra

Project : Using QGANs with adaptive training data for small molecule drug discovery

Category:Lifesciences

Congratulations Saket Apte Vinay Sharma Nikunj Sujit Odayoth @Vedant Gupta

 

SPECIAL MENTION 2: Q3DPredictor

Team from Qkrishi ( Indian Quantum Startup)

Project: Efficient Prediction of 3D Structure of Proteins using Quantum Algorithms

Category: Lifesciences

Congratulations! @Deshpande Sangram , V Raghavendra Harishankar P V Anant Sharma Janani A

 

Acknowledgements

The Hackathon took the support of Volunteers, mentors and Judges from around the globe. Literally the global Quantum Village came together to make this Hackathon happen. Thank you to our Volunteers , Mentors and Judges . The participants voted from the Best Mentor Award and Aneel Mitra and Divya Perumal were voted as the best mentors ! Congratulations!