Brown Quantum Initiative Hackathon – November 8, 2025
Hosted at Brown University, Providence, RI
Since the launch of the Brown Quantum Initiative (BQI) in 2023, our beloved mascot Bruno the Bear has become obsessed with quantum computing. He’s read every BIQS abstract, tinkered with Qiskit notebooks, and even tried to draw Bloch spheres on napkins at the Blue Room.
This fall, Bruno decided to finally join a research group to prove his quantum skills. Unfortunately, all the nice quantum computing professors (like Prof. Rubenstein and Coley) are on sabbatical… so Bruno ended up in the lab of the infamous Professor CNOTworthy, notorious for assigning open-ended problems that might not even be possible. 😭
On Bruno’s first day, the professor gave him a single cryptic instruction:
“Bruno, if you want to earn your place in my lab, show me that you can
(1) see quantum circuits differently, and
(2) make them smaller.”
Now, Bruno needs your help to buy time with Professor CNOTworthy and survive until the end of the semester when the other professors are back.
You can assist Bruno through one (or both) of the following challenge paths:
Bruno’s circuits are getting too complex for his bear brain. He needs a fresh way to see quantum circuits — something more intuitive, dynamic, or even artistic than the standard gate-by-gate diagrams.
Your task:
- Rethink how quantum circuits are visualized.
- Build a prototype tool that can load any QASM file and display it in an innovative way.
- Consider geometry, animation, sound, 3D structure, or interaction — you can go beyond boxes and wires.
- The best visualizations will reveal new patterns or insights into circuit structure.
Professor CNOTworthy has given Bruno three massive quantum circuits, each using 40 qubits. He doesn’t expect Bruno to run them (yet) — but he does expect him to make them as compact as possible.
Your task:
- Compile each of the three provided circuits to two different target architectures:
- An all-to-all connectivity quantum computer of your choice, and
- IBM’s Fez machine, a representative of IBM’s heavy-hex QPU family.
- You can use open source tools to help you compile circuits
- Report and justify your optimization pipeline and compilation strategy.
- The goal: achieve the smallest total two-qubit gate count for both targets while maintaining functional equivalence — i.e. no approximations.
⁉️ Hidden Challenge(s)
Additional requirements—some mandatory, some optional—and challenge modifiers will be revealed throughout the day via our Discord channel.
Edit: The 2 additional requirements, 2 modifiers, and 1 optional sidequest that were released throughout the competition been copied from Discord into the extra file.
At the end of the competition, each team must:
- Submit all code and documentation via a pull request to the official 2025 Brown Quantum Hackathon GitHub repository.
- Present their work in a 10-minute presentation, followed by up to 5 minutes of Q&A from judges and the audience.
- Clearly explain:
- What problem you tackled
- Your methodology and tools
- Your key findings or visualizations
- Any creative or technical insights
- Other things you would like to share with the judges
- You may choose either Path 1 or Path 2 — or both, if you’re feeling ambitious.
- You can use AI and AI tools all you want. However, you are resposible for understanding all the code you wrote and you might be asked questions about it. Failure to udnerstand what your code is doing or why is it doing it after the final submission could result in point penalties. Our suggestion is use AI all you want to prototype but before submitting your final solution make sure you understand what the code is doing.
Judging Criteria:
- 🧠 Innovation – Originality and creativity of your approach.
- ⚙️ Technical correctness – Functionality and soundness of your solution.
- 🗣️ Presentation clarity – How clearly you communicate your ideas and results.