California Polytechnic State University undergraduate students Alexander Knapen and Nayana Tiwari and graduate student Julian Rice had never programmed on quantum computers before. But after 50 hours at the 2022 MIT Interdisciplinary Quantum Hackathon, they had built an online quantum chat server that encrypts messages using quantum algorithms. Knapen, Tiwari, and Rice had worked tirelessly on the chat server over an adrenaline-fueled weekend at the third annual iQuHACK (pronounced “i-quack”, like the duck in the hackathon’s logo). At iQuHACK, 400 people from 57 countries gathered virtually to design and build…
