We got second place at YQuantum 2025!

After MIT IQuHacks, I was feeling pretty demoralized about participating in quantum hackathons. Our team fell apart early—half the group was gone by 10 PM—and our QuEra project presentation was a complete mess. To be fair, the challenge itself was chaotic since it involved beta testing Bloqade, but it felt like I was the only one genuinely interested in either winning or at least connecting with sponsors. Out of the five of us, Rohan left early to hit an MIT party, Ryan seemed out of his depth, and Austin took off soon after for a Brown party—we didn’t see him again until our presentation. That left just Eric and me to piece things together.

In the moment, I was frustrated, but at least Eric and I managed to finish the challenge without turning on each other. Still, the whole experience left me questioning whether it was worth skipping school for events like this. Not that my classes were thrilling, but I would’ve liked to get something meaningful out of all the stress. Instead, I came back to a pile of makeup work and had to grind until 3 AM for several nights just to catch up on homework and lectures.

So, after that letdown, I wasn’t exactly eager to sign up for another quantum hackathon, only to get abandoned halfway through and buried in stress again. I ultimately chose to attend YQuantum for two main reasons:

• Jeffrey was one of the organizers, and I thought it’d be nice to reconnect with him.
• I’d just been invited to the Harvard Undergraduate Trading Competition the week before, which meant my flights would be covered. Honestly, that was the real motivator—there’s no way I’d have risked paying out of pocket only to be disappointed again.

Although I had to miss a week of school, I managed to stay on track by streaming lectures and reviewing notes on my own. This time, I was lucky to have teammates who actually cared. Haadi and Tanmay were clearly in it to win it, and their energy kept me going. I think that was the longest stretch I’ve ever stayed awake in my life. I definitely felt the sleep deprivation kick in at times, but I didn’t want to let them down. If they were giving it their all, I wasn’t about to half-ass my part.

Even when I doubted the value of my contributions, I kept at it—and that consistency paid off. Around 4 AM, I finally managed to resolve the biggest bottleneck in our project: reconstructing quantum states from the measured Wigner functions. That breakthrough ended up being crucial to our success.

After the hacking period, I was completely drained. I went back to the room to rest and nearly missed our presentation—I felt awful about that. During the awards ceremony, I had already convinced myself we didn’t win since we hadn’t placed first in the Alice and Bob track. I even texted my mom and Jeffrey saying it was a bust. So when they announced that we’d placed second overall—and that we’d won a $2,500 prize—it felt surreal.

Capping off the weekend by having dinner with Jeffrey and his friends in New Haven was a great way to wind down. Looking back, YQuantum restored some of the excitement I’d lost after IQuHacks. It reminded me that with the right team and environment, these events can actually be meaningful and even fun.

Offered Quant Trading Internship by Citigroup!

After unsuccessful interviews with Optiver and Jane Street, I was thrilled to finally secure an opportunity with Citigroup! Ironically, I don’t even remember applying—it must have been during the summer when I was submitting applications to open roles in bulk. At the time, I had no other offers lined up, so when the interview opportunity came through, I knew I had to make it count. The process involved four interviews over two days. It began with a non-technical screening interview with a current FICC trader, where I was asked about my experiences in quantitative finance and my interest in Citigroup. This round went smoothly, and a few days later, I was invited to the Superday. The Superday consisted of three rounds: a technical interview, a case study, and a personality-based discussion. The technical round was with a Forex trader who asked me about market trends and basic probability brainteasers. Compared to Optiver and Jane Street, these questions were more manageable, and I felt confident in my responses. The case study came next, where I had to devise an investment strategy for three commodities based on given market conditions. I had twenty minutes to analyze and prepare, followed by a ten-minute presentation of my findings. Interestingly, the interviewer noticed quantum computing on my résumé and spent more than half the session discussing that instead of my case study! Despite having less time to present, he reassured me that my analysis was strong. Finally, there was the personality round, which turned out to be the most unusual. My interviewer was extremely reserved—he’d ask a question, I’d answer in 2–3 minutes, and he’d simply respond with a curt “okay” before moving on. His disinterest made me think I had bombed the interview, but, to my surprise, I ultimately got the role!

While it’s reassuring to have a guaranteed internship at Citigroup for the summer, my primary focus remains on securing more impactful research opportunities. Although Citigroup offers a stable and prestigious environment, it doesn’t significantly align with my long-term goal of strengthening my graduate school prospects. To achieve that, I’m aiming to land a competitive SURF or lab internship that will better align with my academic and research aspirations.

Attended the DE Shaw Connect hosted in the Whitney Musuem in NYC

Attending this networking event was my first time engaging in something purely focused on connecting with industry professionals, like DE Shaw traders and systems engineers. Since I had already been rejected from the DE Shaw internships, I didn't really focus on the recruiters. While much of the information they shared was familiar to me from other sources, I enjoyed spending time chatting with other students. Below is a cool picture I took with Derick Lee and Kevin Zhang.

The event itself was top-notch, with catering that offered high-end options like lobster, prawns, and unique desserts. It was a refreshing break from the typical CMU grind, giving me a chance to enjoy an all-expenses-paid trip to NYC. My only regret was not staying longer, as I flew back early the next day.

We got 2nd at Citadel's Correlation One and Citadel Securities Summer Invitational Datathon!

This was my first datathon, and it was quite a wild experience. Although the problem statement and datasets were released on Monday morning, we didn’t finalize our ideas until Friday—ironically, the first idea I had. We had team members in three different time zones (EST, PST, and SGT), so we mostly worked together between 3-4 AM EST (goodbye, sleep!). All my teammates had full-time internships, while I was juggling two concurrent research projects. The day before the submission, I spent the evening partying with friends and ended up working until 5 AM. I then woke up at 9 AM and worked straight through to the 5 PM submission deadline. My heart nearly stopped until we received the confirmation receipt!


Overall, it was completely worth it though. That being said I took a couple key lessons from this experience:

• Keep it simple. We took so long to finalize a project, since we kept on trying to incorporate advanced techniques, instead of just identifying basic patterns and branching from there.
• Don't overdo it. We initally aimed to create a 15 page report, but couldn't gauge how much content was required and ended creating our 24 page monstrosity.
• Use your team's strengths. We leveraged the unique backgrounds of each team member to develop the best parts of the paper. The pairs trading algorithm, developed from Pi Rey (The GOAT)'s quant internship, was undoubtedly the crown jewel of our report.

Thanks to Pi Rey Low, Julia Huang and Peter Zheng for their contributions to this work, and I will aim for Gold next time!

I finally made my own website after much procrastination and am quite happy with the result. I might update this blog after major events or just forget about it.

This summer, I don't have a full-time internship at a startup or corporate program, which is a bit disappointing. The closest thing is my research with Dr. Arkopal Dutt at IBM. Although visiting the Cambridge IBM office once a week is cool, it doesn't feel like a full-time internship. That said, I've been staying busy.

I've been working on three projects this summer:

• Learning Discrete Graphical Models: I am working with Dr. Arkopal Dutt of IBM Cambridge to develop learning algorithms for discrete graphical models, requiring me to brush up on probability and study probabilistic graphical models. We're developing a Julia library for these novel methods and aim to publish a paper by December.
• SDP Formulations for Entanglement: Collaborating with Professors Javier Pena, Sridhar Tayur, and Dr. Vikesh Siddhu, I'm developing and testing SDP formulations for entanglement. This project involves a deep understanding of quantum entanglement and familiarity with SDP modeling software.
• Ship Rererouting Problem: I worked with Dr. Fei Li and intern Max Zhao on "Improved Classical and Quantum Algorithms for Shipment Rerouting Problems." This advanced my previous work on the Metric Traveling Salesman Problem. We've submitted the paper to ALENEX25 and hope for acceptance.

Outside of research, I'm working with Dr. Elias Towe, Rohan Jain, Ryan Wang, and Param Sehrawat to set up Quantum Computing @ CMU, practicing LeetCode, and applying to quant positions. For fun, I've been doing chess puzzles, binging shows, and spending time with my family.