The Imperial College London quiz team which included computational science graduate from Kolkata Sourajit Debnath, 31, has emerged the winner of the champion’s trophy of ‘University Challenge’, dubbed television’s toughest quiz tournament in the United Kingdom.
The win in Monday night’s final aired on BBC makes the London-based university one of the most successful in the show’s history, winning the coveted trophy for the fifth time — the last time being in 2022.
“I feel elated to be a part of British quizzing history and grateful that our team had the opportunity to clinch the title while representing Imperial,” said Debnath, who was looking after maths, physics, and general science, along with pop culture on the humanities side.
Amol Rajan, the British Indian presenter who hosts the popular BBC programme, described Imperial’s victory as “remarkable”.
The team were awarded the ‘University Challenge’ trophy by host Amol Rajan and acclaimed playwright Sir Tom Stoppard at an event at Imperial College London’s South Kensington Campus.
“Imperial’s diverse international community is used to finding the answers to really tough questions, whether that’s in the lab or on University Challenge. I’m really proud of our winning team,” said Imperial’s Provost Professor Ian Walmsley.
In preparation for the challenge, the team spent months revising their specialist subjects and practising quizzes as a close-knit group, said the team captain Suraiya Haddad.
Debnath has completed a Master’s in Applied Computational Science and Engineering at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, a degree he chose to pivot to a career in computational science.
In India, he was a space scientist at UR Rao Space Centre, the spacecraft-making arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), where he worked on the 2019 Indian lunar lander/rover mission Chandrayaan-2, among other spacecraft. After his graduation from Imperial College London, he joined an Imperial start-up focused on geophysics algorithms operating out of the university’s Royal School of Mines.
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