The 2025 Agenda
Pre-Hackathon Schedule
Virtual QC Workshops via Zoom ByQWorld and the NYUAD Hackathon
A full 10 days of virtual interactive QC course will be offered from February 17 – 26, 2025 for all participants with no or little QC experience by experts from QWorld and the NYUAD Hackathon. This is an excellent professional course that has been offered for a few years now by QWorld and is tailored especially for the NYUAD Hackathon.
This will provide an excellent learning experience on QC for all Hackathon participants with certification. It will ensure that you are prepared for the NYUAD hackathon so you can focus on building your application when you arrive at NYUAD. Please note that the course is structured so that you can complete it during March finishing all the required learning units and tasks during your own preferred time.
You must finish all of the learning units and tasks to be admitted to the hackathon and receive the certification. Your participation in the hackathon is contingent upon you receiving the certification for this course. We will provide you with the details about this virtual course by March 1st when you are selected to participate in the Hackathon.
For more details, check out the QWorld website.
*ONLY for Participants. Please note that you will receive a certification for this course from QWorld and the NYUAD Hackathon. This course will run virtually during February 2025 and you can take it during your preferred time.
Virtual workshops
*Please note that virtual workshops are for participants only.
QC and Ethics
April 14, 2025 at 8PM GST
Quantum Tools and Software
April 14, 2025 at 9PM GST
Mubits: Musical Qubits!
April 15, 2025 at 8PM GST
Superconducting Qubits 101
April 16, 2025 at 8PM GST
Bridging Quantum and Classical Worlds: Accelerating Quantum with HPC Tools
April 17, 2025 at 8PM GST
Hamiltonian Simulation with non-variational Quantum Algortihms
April 18, 2025 at 8PM GST
Classically difficult but quantumly easy classification tasks
April 19, 2025 at 8PM GST
Efficient Simulation of Quantum Circuits via Classical Circuits à la Gottesman-Knill: Beyond the Clifford Gates?
April 20, 2025 at 6PM GST
Hackathon Event Schedule
Day 1: Open Ceremony: Lightning talks and Selection of Challenges and Teams
*Only for participants
Day 2: Team Hacking and Project Day
*Only for participants
Take the Bus back from your hotel to the NYUAD Campus A6
Arrival to NYU Abu Dhabi in A6 for food reception with warm up activities and introductions and a campus tour.
Taking the bus back from NYUAD Campus A6 to your hotel. Participants can schedule their own sightseeing of Abu Dhabi such as visiting the Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi Corniche Downtown, or Mamsha in Saadiyat, Yas Bay, etc. You need to arrange this on your own. Make sure to get a good night of sleep though as we start from 8 AM.
At Sofitel Hotel
Take the Bus from Sofitel Hotel to A6 at NYUAD
Sana Odeh, NYUAD Hackathon Founder and Chair, and a Clinical Professor, NYU NY and Affiliated Faculty at NYUAD
Amir Karamlou, Research Scientist at Google Quantum AI | MIT ’18 PhD ’23, USA
Terri Burns, Type Capital / @tcburning and a member of the NYU Board of Trustees , formerly Google Ventures, USA
Davide Fanciulli, Assistant Program Management Officer, Beyond Lab, UN Geneva, Switzerland
Aziza Almanakly, Graduate Research Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Nouhaila Innan, Research Team Lead @ eBRAIN Lab | Postdoctoral Associate @ CQTS | PhD in QML | QML & QC Researcher at NYUAD
Hisham Sati, Director of the NYUAD Center for Quantum and Topological Systems (CQTS); NYUAD Associate Dean of Science; Professor and Program Head of Mathematics at NYUAD; A member of the NYUAD Hackathon Program Committee, UAE
Paweł Gora
Souhaib Benbouazza
Ioannis Theodonis
Benjamin Hall, Senior Quantum Software Engineer, Infleqtion, United States
Zakaria Dahbi
Kaoutar El Maghraoui, Principal Research Scientist and Technical Leader, IBM Research AI, USA
Vardaan Sahgal, Quantum Software and Solutions Head, Womanium Quantum, USA
| Sama Kanbour | AI & Lean Program Director, GE Aerospace, USA |
| Ricky Young | Quantum Software Engineer, qBraid |
| Amro Saidelahel | NYUAD Stern Student and Previously Resident at SandboxAQ, USA |
| Amir Karamlou | Google/MIT, USA |
| Nouhaila Innan | Research Team Lead @ eBRAIN Lab | Postdoctoral Associate @ CQTS | PhD in QML | QML & QC Researcher at NYUAD |
| Alberto Marchisio | Postdoctoral researcher, NYUAD, UAE |
| Akash Kant | Quantum Cloud Architect, Qbraid, USA |
| Yousra Farhani | Quantum Machine Learning and Optimisation Researcher at INSA Lyon, Founder of Quantum Africa |
| Aziza Almanakly | Graduate Research Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA |
| Nouhaila Innan | Research Team Lead @ eBRAIN Lab | Postdoctoral Associate @ CQTS | PhD in QML | QML & QC Researcher at NYUAD |
| Amro Saidelahel | NYUAD Stern Student and Previously Resident at SandboxAQ, USA |
| Tamara Hamad | Student at Ajman University, UAE |
| Alberto Marchisio | Postdoctoral researcher, NYUAD, UAE |
| Rustem Khassanov | NYUAD Student, UAE |
| Priya Aswani | Engineering & Product Manager | Principal Full Stack Engineer | Faculty in Computer Science UAE |
| Yafa JARADAT | Student, Palestine Polytechnic University, Palestine |
| Nathan Jones | Southeast Quantathon Grand Prize |
| Mohammadsaleh Naghdi | Student, Caltech, USA |
Sana Odeh, NYUAD Hackathon Founder and Chair, and a Clinical Professor, NYU NY and Affiliated Faculty at NYUAD
Teams Ideation: Each team meets on their own, refine, finalize and adapt their idea.
Helpful ideation link: Ideation Process || Teams Napkin Pitch (Mentors from each team needs to fill out by the 25th by 5PM)
1) Finalize team challenge and team formation and set team schedule for the hackathon
2)Teams set schedule and responsibilities for the week, determines their own schedule.
3)Judges pass by the teams to give feedback (5 minutes with each team).
1 member from each team will pitch team idea. Each pitch should have 1 sentence capturing the problem, solution and tech ingredient. Each pitch will be 30 seconds per team. This is a good exercise to get all sharpen their idea and get feedback from judges and other teams. We want to make sure everyone has a solid and exciting ideas. The order of the pitch will start with team 1 to 15.
Please RSVP by the 20th
Busses will take you back to your hotel after the desert
Breakfast at Sofitel Hotel
Take the bus from the hotel to A6 at NYUAD.
If you miss the bus, you are responsible of your own transportation to campus
Teams review their tasks/plan /responsibilties
build their hack (they should plan to have a working demo by the end of day). Finish the presentation.
Please let us know if you need help from other mentors or judges –
we are here to support all of the teams and make sure you all succeed!
NYUAD Conference center (A6)
Teams meet and work on their projects.
NYUAD Conference center (A6)
Teams meet and work on their projects.
Transportation to the hotel will be running every 30 mins starting from 7:30 PM (at 7:30, 8:00, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, and 10:30 PM (last bus)
Breakfast at Sofitel Hotel.
Take bus from the hotel to A6 at NYUAD.
Teams work on their own schedule.
NYUAD Conference Center (A6).
Judges will stop by the teams for a few-minute chat with the teams during lunch.
Teams will rehearse their presentation in the auditorium and receive initial feedback. The order will be announced later.
Please make sure all the laptops are charged and have the presentation material.
The location of the meeting will be announced.
Teams finalize their presentations ahead of the ceremony.
Please be on time for the seating before the ceremony.
Sana Odeh, NYUAD Hackathon Founder & Chair and Clinical Professor at NYU NY and Affiliated Faculty at NYUAD
Arlie Petters, Provost, New York University Abu Dhabi
Amal Kasry, Chief of Section, Basic Sciences & Engineering
Natural Sciences Sector, UNESCO, Paris (Virtual)
Matthias Troyer, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President of Quantum
Amir Karamlou, Research Scientist at Google Quantum AI | MIT ’18 PhD ’23, USA
Heike Rill, IBM Fellow, Lead IBM Research Quantum EMEA, Switzerland
Terri Burns, Type Capital / @tcburning and a member of the NYU Board of Trustees , formerly Google Ventures, USA
Prince Koree Osei, Centre President, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Ghana
Julia Theodora Thiele, Sr GTM Spec – Amazon Braket, Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, Germany
Kaoutar El Maghraoui, Principal Research Scientist and Manager, IBM, USA
Martin Gastal, Partnership and Engagement Lead, Adviser, Open Quantum Institute , CERN, France
Javad Shabani, Professor and Director of the Center for Quantum Information Physics at New York University, New York, USA
Davide Fanciulli, Assistant Program Management Officer, The Beyond Lab at UN Geneva, Switzerland
Aziza Almanakly, Graduate Research Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Teams will present their work on stage.
Judges will meet to discuss the presentations and select the winners.
Winners will be announced and given the prizes.
We will be taking a group picture with everyone on stage.
Food will be served at the Conference Center in A6.
Busses will be taking the participants from A6 at NYUAD back to Sofitel Hotel.
Shuttle to airport will be provided from the hotel. The schedule will be shared.
Make sure not to miss it.
The International Year of Quantum Science and Technology
This year, we are proud to take part in the celebration activities of the UN’s declaration of the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ) recognizing 100 years since the initial development of quantum mechanics. We will form cross-disciplinary global teams building solutions to challenging problems related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using Quantum Computing technologies.