The Imperial College London quiz team which included Sourajit Debnath, computational science graduate from Kolkata, has won the champion’s trophy of ‘University Challenge’, which is dubbed as the toughest quiz tournament in the United Kingdom. The 31-year-old who answered several challenging questions in the final is also a former a space scientist at U R Rao Space Centre, the spacecraft-making arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), news agency PTI reported.
Through his contribution towards the team's win, he paid testament to Imperial’s Quiz Society and the “unparallelled mentorship” from previous teams, which contributed to its victory this year with an impressive margin.
With the latest win, the Imperial Quiz's Society coveted trophy for the fifth time – the last time being in 2022. The challenge's final was aired on BBC, making the London-based university one of the most successful in the show's history.
“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.
The British Indian presenter,Amol Rajan, who hosts the popular BBC programme, described Imperial's victory as “remarkable”. He also awarded the trophy to the winning team. “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,” the report quoted Imperial’s Provost Professor Ian Walmsley as saying.
“Their breadth of knowledge well beyond science is truly impressive, and their disciplined approach to the quiz has made history for Imperial as University Challenge’s most successful team,” he added.
The team spent months revising their specialist subjects and practising quizzes as a close-knit group to prepare for the challenge.
Team captain Suraiya Haddad said: “I’m thrilled to have captained Imperial College London to its fifth historic win, making us the institution with the most wins in the history of the programme. We have all worked incredibly hard and done Imperial proud.
“All of us were balancing our degrees with our exams, in my case my finals. We were up against fantastic opposition with UCL [University College London] who played brilliantly throughout the series. The level of support we have received from the Imperial community and beyond has been amazing, thank you to everyone who has been cheering us on!” the team's captain Haddad added.
The winning Imperial team excelled in rounds including a diverse range of topics, such as classical sculpture, European history, Korean mythology and mathematics.
Imperial College's Team reached this year’s finals, leaving behind the team beat Trinity College, the University of Cambridge, in the semi-finals. It also overcame other teams including the University of Manchester and the University of Sheffield.
Earlier this week, Debnath shared, “Imperial’s team is unusually well-rounded this year and each teammate has their own selection of niches, or specialisms to borrow from quiz parlance. All other things being equal, I’m responsible for covering maths, physics, and general science, along with pop culture on the humanities side,” the report noted.
Pivoting from a career in computational science, Debnath has completed a Master’s in Applied Computational Science and Engineering at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London.
While in India, he was a space scientist at ISRO where he worked on the 2019 Indian lunar lander/rover mission Chandrayaan-2, among other spacecraft.
He also joined an Imperial start-up focused on geophysics algorithms operating out of the university’s Royal School of Mines after graduating from Imperial College London.