Last weekend, May 5-7, Qilimanjaro was part of the ETH Zürich Quantum Hackathon, which gathered an international and multidisciplinary team of students, 100 talented participants from 25 different universities. In particular, two of our interns from the Quantum Applications team, Ameer Azzam and Enrique Naranjo, had the chance to present Qilimanjaro and also led one of the challenges. The other two were presented by IQM and Moody’s Analytics. It was a really good opportunity to meet very talented students and to help spread the quantum interest among them.

The challenge that Qilimanjaro presented aimed to take the participants on a journey throughout our company’s stack of technologies and it was splitted into two main parts. First, a software challenge that focused on introducing the participants to adiabatic quantum optimization. Then, this was followed by the hardware challenge. This challenge was aimed to further expand the knowledge of the participants and allow them to learn more about how adiabatic quantum computing works on hardware level. Moreover, this part was designed to highlight the current challenges that quantum hardware faces. 

It turned out to be the most requested challenge and Ameer and Enrique really did a great job conducting the students throughout it during almost 24 hours. It was also a great opportunity to show them how adiabatic quantum computing can bring a quantum advantage now. Overall, everyone that participated returned home knowing more about Qilimanjaro and many of them showed a lot of interest in applying.

Events like this one represent great opportunities for finding talent and making the quantum community grow. We hope to welcome them in the very near future. There’s a lot to do at Qilimanjaro and we are looking for the best in the field!

Thanks again to ETH for counting on us for this occasion. We hope to collaborate with them again soon!