From Dhaka to NYUAD, Abu Dhabi: A journey of Quantum Computing (2)
29th March 2022
A long tiring journey and a fresh shower made me a sound sleep. I woke up around 9 A.M (Abu Dhabi Time) and freshened myself. From my bed there is a window view of NYUAD campus, a white spiral upward structure in front of the Experimental Research Building alluring me to go for a walk. When I was wandering I met Ricky Young, from qBriad. Before arriving to NYUAD, Ricky delivered a talk on pre-workshop for the hackathon. Moving to and fro made me hungry for breakfast and I was looking for snacks. With helping of NYUAD students, I found a cafe in the library building the campus.
There I ordered a mocha and a sandwich. After satisfying my stomach, now started enjoying the scenic beauty of the NYUAD campus. Central plaza which is surrounded by palm trees attracted me the most. I sat down there and palm trees made an obstacle to the sunshine. When I was enjoying the breezing and the artificial water stream there, a notification from slack popped up. It was Dr Sana Odeh, inviting arrived participants in the centre dining place. Pizza is served.
Meeting with Kenav, Shantanu, George, Victory, Teague
The first meeting with Kenav was interesting. I was taking my pizza and was doing a palaver with my peers. Then someone introduced himself affiliated with qBraid, we were praising the website but only one issue is that to load the environment it takes an infinite time. We suggested the person to address this issue and find some way for this. Then he introduced himself as Kenav Setia. I exclaimed with wonder as it was a long desire to meet him in person. Personally, I don’t use any quantum backend locally, rather I only use qBraid and qBraid is adding new features day by day. Therefore, meeting Kenav in person was a chance to thank him for this thankless job.
Gradually, Shantanu, Victory, Teage and George joined us with the Pizza. I knew Shantanu through one of my mutual friend Sameia Zaman, a lab mate of Shantanu. Recently Victory and Teage are affiliated with SuperTech. SuperTech recently published a benchmarking algorithm called SuperQ, which I was following for one of my projects. We discussed about the benchmarking paper and exchanged some idea. It was a very rare opportunity for me to have a discussion with some of my peers whom I have been following since I started my journey on Quantum. Teage and Victory then made a quip: SuperQ is everywhere, even in the desert of Asia
Suddenly Teage, Victory and Ricky realized the scorching sunlight will burn them red and they need sunscreen cream to protect them from a reddish skin. They were looking for a supermall nearby for to buy sunscreen cream. Then someone from NYUAD campus suggested them to visit a seabeach nearby, where they might borrow some sunscreen from the visitors. They left us with Shantanu, Parv, Scott, and George. We then started discussing about bosonic codes and exchanging our ideas and knowledges on it. The next four days, I attended in similar kind of discussions. The conversation lasted till 15:00 (Abu Dhabi Time) and we were grabbing Pizza one after another. At least me ate Pizza for a whole year. And I was wondering I joined there around 10:00 and how fast the next 5 hours spent.
On discussion, I found that George is my neighbour for the next three days. Then we decided to go to our room for taking a rest. George asked me then: Why almost every Bangladeshi known to him can play the guitar? My response was: Okay, I think I am going to disappoint you. I can’t play Guitar but Boys from Bangladesh flirt girls with a guitar and a breakup then turns them into a musician. I invited George to my room as he was struggling to charge his laptop. I showed him a trick about how to use the socket available in the room.
Around 14:00 organizers invited participants to gather in the Central Plaza for having a dinner. Participants around the world started to arrive and whole Plaza was jammed with scientists, researchers, graduate students. Everyone was making new friends and discussing his/her experiences about the quantum. Everyone seemed very much excited. Everyone was looking for a team. I was looking for a good project and to make some fun in the hackathon. I have two options and two teams. Amir and George were a mentor for a team and the they planned to work on Quantum Error Correction related project, while Victor and Nouhaila were planning to work on a project related to Quantum Sensor. For a moment I was in a superposition state but I need to project my state with a H gate. I made up my mind to work with Victor on quantum sensing as this kind of idea is totally very new to me.
Scenic beauty of sunset and lighting in the central plaza gave me a surreal experience. A cold breezing from the sea in front of #myNYUAD and main gate made a more enjoyable dinner. Under the palm trees we made a circle and everyone was introducing him/herself to the audiences. Then we played a game: How many names you can remind? I am very bad at remembering name and to protect me from an embrassing situation I hide myself in the gathering. I found that Priya remembered almost everyone. Although, the next day I asked her to name me, she swapped my name with Rishab, who had same complexion and similar kind of bear.
I come back to my room and suddenly felt jetlag. It was a weird experience for me, cause for some moment I was confused which timezone I should follow, should it be Dhaka and Abu Dhabi. It was a very new experience for me. I did some study about quantum sensing to prepare myself for the next two days hackathon. Next day the program will start on 8:00
30th March 2022
Inauguration program of the hackathon started after the breakfast. Basically, in academics people go to conference and hackathons for having meals voraciously. I also did the same thing. I enjoyed every meal and wanted to taste out UAE local foods. On this morning, we were making fun about winter of Chicago, and finally we came to the conclusion that: There is winter-winter, winter-summer and winter-spring in Chicago but there is no only summer, only spring, only winter in Chicago. After Inauguration and some keynotes talks, we started hacking.
For the hacking initially the progress was very slow, we were confused how will articulate our ideas. For the first few hours we spent out time in reading some published papers on quantum sensing. Every team members individually read the papers and shared their understandings on there. Farhan, Genie, Dania, Jakub, Peng, Zayd all were amazing teammates. There were a board where we were discussing and sharing our ideas, understanding. Unlimited soft drinks were available during the brainstorming. We spent almost the whole day articulating the idea.
But the main attraction of this day was visiting Louvre in Abu Dhabi. Just after dinner, a bus from the NYUAD main gate departure from the campus. During the travel, I was accompanied with George. We discussed the scenic beauty of Abu Dhabi. I expected to see more trees of dates but the roadsides disappointed me. Vehicles are plying through the road with a great speed and sun was setting.
During the entry of Louvre Police every participant had to went through covid-19 protocol and had to show vaccinations. My vaccine card wasn’t printed out so I had to show that with my laptop. I was nervous for a moment if there were any charge. I got the entrance. Large hall room with white high ceiling made an impression where lights were glittering like a starlight in the white sky. But the surprised was a DJ Party by DJ spooky. When I arrived the stage a ghast wind from an artificial gulf beach received me warmly. People were enjoying the dark gulf water, and it seemed to me a wallpaper where other side of the river is large skyscrapers with blue sky. But in my case, there were streams and the night was dark only Louvre light gave me a feelings of moonlight night. I found a large bin bag seat and was started discussing with Amir about Quantum. Lol, A Quantum guy always thinks about qubits and two quantum guy will always discuss about what to do with this qubit.
I am very bad at dancing but Shantanu helped me to got my move. It was a crazy night. Everyone was enjoying. While we all from around the world was dancing, words from Dr Sana Odeh in the morning was buzzing: There are no they and we, its only us. During the whole dancing period, DJ Spooky entertained us with Quantum Music developed by Scott. In the background recently released The Batman comics were displayed. Around 22:00 PM, our bus destined for NYUAD campus. Dancing made a sound sleep for me.
31st March 2022
Next day of Hackathon started as usual, with breakfast. We took some group photos and started hacking.
Victory has written a good blog article on our Quantum Sensing projects and our team was Quantum Sensing Pirates [Link]. We did brain storming to articulate our ideas and execute them. Our main struggle for the project was to do a Hamiltonian Simulation for the sensing purpose. Amir helped me during this case to execute my ideas into coding. It took almost whole day to finally come out with an EURECA moment. For me this feeling was like, I am in a NASA control room and I am real scientist now. Around 22:00 We packed our laptop and belonging to return our rooms. For the next day we have to make a presentation and practice for pitching our presentation.
1st April 2022
Every team did their best to complete their work. I had my breakfast with Dr Sana Odeh, she was impressed with the dedication hackers showed for the competitions. Participants did their projects till 3:00 AM in the morning to complete.
Quantum Sensing Pirates, i.e. my team mates were in a relax mood as we have to make presentation. Around 14:00 PM we presented our projects to the judges, they suggested some corrections. According to their suggestion we changed our presentation. Our project line was: Quantum Pirates that saves lives On the final presentation Genie made a great presentation. Basically during hacking we were stuck on a paper. We reached out to the authors with email, they didn’t respond. Then we found that one of the author has a twitter id, we even messaged there but it was a futile efforts. When Genie shared the experiences the audiences gave a huge applause. I was a bit nervous as I had to describe the main ideas of the projects. But as team everyone did a great job.
After end of presentation by each team, it was a very nail-biting time for the participants who is going to win the hackathons. When I found that Quantum Sensing Pirates won the second prize for the project, my feeling was I am in a movie. We jumped infront of our seat, as hugged with every team mates. As a I child I used to watch this kind of movie, where after a great achievement in a big hall room people celebrates them. Whole audience was eyeing for us and flashlights of camera turned on. For a moment, I got a real feeling of winning a great event.
End and Meet Bangladesh Community in NYUAD
In the dining I feel bad that this is going to end in some moments. From dining, people started leaving the place. I also have to leave the place. I wished I could stay for some moments. When I came back to my room, I felt that in the next day I have to leave the campus. For the last time I should wander around the campus. Moreover, the next day was the first day of Ramadan, and Sahri will start. When I was walking in the lawn, I found Amir is going to leave the campus, it was a long desire to meet him in person. I gave him an adieu. There Nouhaila was discussing with her friends I joined there and learnt some new Arabic words with her. Then I felt that I had to take meal for Sahri. In Dining 2 of the NYUAD I was taking my sehri, when I ended I found Mashrafi ( maybe I misspelled his name, I met him on 30th March 2022). He invited me to meet with students from Bangladesh. I meet them and they gave me a warm welcome. After a long time I finally been able to breath in my native language Bengali. I already forgot almost everyone name, but there was Farhan and Noushad who accompanied me till my departure for the bus. We also did our Fazr prayers together. First Ramadan Sahri in NYUAD and Bangladeshi Community was amazing experiences.
I left the NYUAD campus at 8:00 AM and when I left my room keys, I felt like a chord in between me and the NYUAD just break apart. My flight was from Dubai International Airport, it was around two and half hour bus journey to reach the airport. I came back home on 2nd April around 22:00 PM (Dhaka time).
Thank you NYUAD for hosting the event. I want to come back the campus once again, have a coffee under the palm trees and enjoy the spring starry night on the green lawn.
