My experience at the NYUAD Hackathon 2023

It all started on March 6th, during my 20-day long semester break when I received the selection email on a regular Monday. Needless to say, I was ecstatic and so were my parents.

After confirming our participation, we immediately began the training course consisting of QBronze and QSilver. For 10 days we had 2-hour lectures over Zoom by experienced QWorld mentors and had to submit assignments and quizzes after going through the Python notebooks from QWorld. The courses were very helpful and connected a lot of dots in my head. We then had a little break to complete our quizzes and assignments.

The ideation process began and we were asked to submit ideas based on the UN SDGs.

Handling the courses, academics and an internship all at once was definitely a lot but it was also worth it. Next, I had my mid-semester exams during which I made a very wise decision of jumping onto a step with slippers and ended up with a fracture on my left arm 5 days before I had to leave for the hackathon. The broken bones didn’t hurt remotely as much as my broken spirits.

Around this time there were also some workshops and talk by various experts for setting up an environment for running code on hardware, some talks on the scope of quantum computing and so on.

We were also divided into teams based on the top 3 UN SDGs we’d like to work on and our experience levels. The teams were very diverse and I think they did a wonderful job making them. I was really excited to meet so many people from various parts of the world and academic backgrounds.

Day 0

I got done with my exams on the 25th and then went for an x-ray the next day to make sure everything is in place and fortunately, it was. My flight was on the 27th of April from Kochi and I landed around 1 PM, took an hour for walking in terminal 3, going through security, immigration check, and baggage reclaim. I went towards the exit and found the NYUAD Hackathon sign, hopped into a taxi and reached the hotel at 4 PM.

The events begin at 4 PM at the NYUAD campus so I quickly left to the campus in the shuttle. The campus was huge and had everything from bookstores to supermarkets. They even have their own currency! We were handed our badges and t-shirts and we all slowly started mingling, won’t lie I was very intimidated by all these smart people. We had an icebreaker activity followed by dinner and the DJ Spooky concert. I met most of my teammates after which we headed back to the hotel.

Day 1

The first day of the hackathon started off with lightning talks by a bunch of extremely cool people. We got lots of insights from researchers, entrepreneurs, professors and students. Then, the hackathon officially began and teams started hacking! On this day we were to decide our team name, and problem statement and start working towards our solution. After dinner, there were two shuttles – one to the Grand Mosque and the other to the Louvre. The Louvre closes at 8:30 PM so that set of people didn’t get to see much.

Day 2

Day 2 started off strong as we knew what we were supposed to do. We worked on our parts and prepared for Napkin Pitches where one team member is given 30s to give an overview of the team’s idea. This was very fun after which the judges came around to each team to give their feedback. Teams then got back to work. A lot of the teams including ours stayed up very late and we also got ourselves some midnight snacks!

Day 3

On the last day, we were given a few hours to finish up. Everyone assembled in the auditorium for the evening anticipating the results. After a heartfelt speech from Prof. Sana, the Provost of NYUAD spoke about NYUAD and the Hackathon after which an MoU was signed between NYUAD and GESDA. We had a panel discussion followed by an inspirational talk by Loay Elbasyouni, who was the electrical lead of the NASA Ingenuity Mars helicopter team - he told us about his rough childhood and how he rose to become who he is now. Then the crux of this day - the teams presented one by one for 5 minutes each. A lot of the teams worked on optimising networks and you can find all presentations and GitHub repos here. While the judges were making a decision, we had more talks - first, we had Heike Rill from IBM give us a progress update on the industrial side of things. Next, Davide Venturelli, Associate Director, Quantum Computing at USRA talked about quantum optimisation and QAOA. Then, Dr. Urbasi Sinha gave us insights about testing the boundaries of the quantum world and finally Paul D. Miller delivered a beautiful talk on how connected and interdependent the fields of science and art are and even connected this to history. The winners were then announced and we all headed to dinner. I found certain teams' projects very cool and wanted to talk to them about it but we didn't get any time, wish we had some time reserved for interaction after the team presentations.

More information about the hackathon can be found at https://sites.nyuad.nyu.edu/hackathon/index.php/about/

They hand you a sim card with 1 GB of data for 24 hours during the immigration check at DXB, and it still lies in an unopened envelope as I write this blog, days after I've returned. I was so invested and involved in the hackathon that I couldn't find time to use a free Sim card.

Overall, this was surreal. I had a wonderful team, and the best mentors and I'm grateful that I got to work with every member of my team. I met so many cool and smart people although I wish I had been more social and spoken to more people.