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RoNaQCI Quantum Hackathon 2025

UVT CYBER TEAM 2

The RoNaQCI (Romanian National Quantum Communication Infrastructure) Quantum Hackathon unfolded over five days—June 16–20, 2025—as part of the broader EuroQCI initiative. Our UVT-CTF team took part in the online eliminatory round, advanced to the on-site finals in Bucharest, and ultimately clinched top honors with our qTLS project. Here’s the full story.

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RoNaQCI Quantum Hackathon 2025: From Quals to Victory

📋 Qualifying Round (June 17)

On June 17, teams across Romania and beyond submitted live online presentations across five thematic tracks:

  • Quantum Key Distribution Software & Applications
  • Quantum Computing Algorithms
  • Quantum Education & Games
  • Quantum Optical Systems
  • Post-Quantum Cryptography

UVT-CTF delivered a focused walkthrough of our qTLS concept—a quantum-enhanced TLS stack—and secured one of the seven finalist slots.

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Key facts:

  • 150+ students formed 31 teams
  • 5 tracks, judged by 16 jury members
  • 25 technical mentors

🏆 Finals & Victory (June 20)

Back on-site at POLITEHNICA Bucharest on June 20, we presented our qTLS demo live in front of Romania’s leading quantum experts. Competing on technical complexity, design, utility, and presentation, UVT-CTF took home one of the five prizes awarded that day.

A short description of our project

We have encapsulated our project — qTLS — in a versatile Python library that is easy to integrate by developers, researchers and students in their projects.

Over the course of 3 days, we have implemented a network simulator that supports collaborative sessions, where we could visualize the steps of a client-server handshake .

The main advantage of QKD (quantum key distribution) is its ability to detect intrusions, and by simulating an eavesdropper we can observe exactly how the protocol would be disrupted.

The post-quantum certificate system protects against man-in-the-middle attacks and turns qTLS into a fully featured protocol that is seamlessly integrated with QKD directly at the transport layer.

The library can be embedded in messaging apps, email, file-transfer tools, APIs, or even experimental applications. For the demo, our vision is to develop it into a network-infrastructure manager.

Project Demo: Watch our qTLS handshake simulator in action:

Competition Highlights

  • Participation: Over 150 students formed 31 teams and tackled challenges across five tracks.
  • Mentorship & Evaluation: Participants were guided by 25 mentors and judged by 16 jury members from leading Romanian universities and research institutes.
  • Engagement: Teams exchanged more than 2,094 messages on Discord and logged 637 hours of voice chat throughout the hackathon.
  • Prize Pool: A total of €7,500 was awarded among the top-performing teams.
  • Tracks & Eligibility: Competitors under 25 years old formed teams of 3–5 students to solve problems in Quantum Key Distribution, Quantum Computing Algorithms, Quantum Education & Games, Quantum Optical Systems, and Post-Quantum Cryptography.

🙌 Meet the Champions

Our winning lineup:

  • Andra Bimbirica
  • Tania Titiriga
  • Mark Dragota
  • Elias Bota
  • Raul Radulescu
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🔭 What’s Next

We’re riding this momentum straight to the Sejong Hacktheon 2025 in Sejong City, South Korea, on July 10, 2025. Stay tuned for updates at cybersec.uvt.ro.

A huge thank you to the RoNaQCI organizers, mentors, jury members, and all participants for an unforgettable week of quantum innovation.

Hackathon Terms & Conditions (PDF)
Official RoNaQCI Hackathon page
UVT-CTF on CTFTime