While on co-op at the Institute for Quantum Computing, I attended Quantum Days 2025 in Toronto. I connected with Michael Silver, who would go on to lead U of T’s quantum computing club, and through him met Kieran D’Sena from McMaster’s club and Jack Freeman and Emily Berlinghoff from Western’s.
Somehow, despite being home to IQC, Waterloo didn’t have a quantum computing club. By the last day of the conference I’d stopped paying attention to the talks, and was instead researching how to start a club and drafting introductory quantum computing lectures.
It didn’t take long to meet Chaitanya Sharma, Prachee Nanda, Iman Umair-Qaiser, and Lavanya Yadav, four computer engineering students at Waterloo who were on the same mission as me. We joined forces, and by the start of the summer term we had weekly meetings planned with lectures and events lined up.
The summer term went well, with 10 to 15 people showing up each week. In the fall, all four co-founders left for co-op, leaving me to lead the club. Juman Amro led the club’s marketing, which boosted regular attendance, and recruited most of the executives who ended up taking the club off my hands come the next winter term, when I was off on co-op at D-Wave.