Bc. Jan Dufek, a master's student in the Quantum Informatics programme at the Faculty of Information Technology of Czech Technical University in Prague (FIT CTU), took part in the Qiskit Hackathon Taiwan 2026 in mid-August. The event was held at National Taiwan University in Taipei. Over three intensive days, he worked in an international team on a challenge focused on quantum energy transport, testing their solution not only on simulators but also on real IBM quantum hardware.
Teams at the hackathon were formed randomly, bringing together participants from different countries with diverse backgrounds, experience, and expertise. Jan Dufek therefore found himself working with people he had never met before the event.
“It was an interesting dynamic... almost quantum-like,” Jan says.
Jan's team chose the topic of Environment-Assisted Quantum Transport (ENAQT). The available challenges covered areas such as optimisation, simulation, quantum machine learning, and quantum chemistry. ENAQT is a phenomenon in which a certain amount of environmental noise can paradoxically help a quantum system transport energy. At first glance, this idea may seem surprising, as noise is generally regarded as a problem in quantum computing that researchers try to minimise as much as possible.
“Simply put, we investigated whether a certain level of noise could help with energy transport in a quantum system,” Jan explains.
To illustrate the principle, it can be compared to photosynthesis. When sunlight reaches a leaf, energy has to pass through a complex network before reaching the point where it can be used. If the system were perfectly ordered, the energy could potentially end up in a dead end. A small amount of noise, on the other hand, can help it overcome certain obstacles and reach its destination more efficiently. This was precisely the principle the team modelled using a quantum computer during the hackathon.
The results confirmed that a certain amount of noise can indeed be beneficial. The team identified an optimal level of moderate noise at which the probability of the system overcoming an energy barrier increased. The result was better than in both a fully coherent system and a system exposed to excessive noise. After completing the main challenge, the team used the remaining time for further experiments, modifying, for example, the network topology and the quantum circuit itself.
An important part of the work was the opportunity to run experiments on real IBM quantum hardware. In addition to a simulator, Jan's team also worked with the and chips. Working with a real quantum processor revealed differences compared with simulation, particularly the impact of actual noise, which can significantly affect the results of longer quantum circuits. This made it even more important to reduce the number of quantum gates and the overall circuit depth while maintaining suitable simulation parameters. Only experiments on the real chip demonstrated how difficult it is to maintain an optimal noise level and how this issue is also connected to the broader topic of quantum error correction. There was considerable demand for access to the quantum hardware during the hackathon, so the team was unable to complete all of the experiments they had planned.
“The whole event was a huge opportunity for me, and although we ultimately did not win a prize, as a team we learned a great deal of new information. At the same time, I realised how well the courses focused on quantum informatics are taught here at FIT CTU. Another personal reward was the inspiration I gained from many of the lectures in the accompanying programme and from the two-day expert event Scaling for Quantum Advantage and Beyond, which took place before the hackathon and featured experts from IBM and its partner institutions. Above all, I had the opportunity to meet people who share the same enthusiasm for quantum computing,” Jan says, reflecting on his participation.
