Staff and students go head-to-head on BBC quiz show

A BBC Radio 4 quiz show featuring Imperial science students competing against their professors will air next week.

The trio of undergraduate students from a variety of science disciplines went head to head in The 3rd Degree – a BBC Radio 4 programme hosted by comedian Steve Punt. 

The quiz heat, which was recorded on campus in February this year, will be broadcast to the nation on Monday 6 July. 

“Terrific fun, and enlightening too”: Staff and students on the gameshow

The quiz show, which has been on air for ten years, features three undergraduates against three members of staff in a series of rounds. The rounds vary from general knowledge, to a subject-specific round, to a 'Highbrow / Lowbrow' round, where students can challenge their professors on popular culture, with questions ranging from Barthes to Beyoncé. 

The student team was: 

• Mathematics student Sorcha Owens 
• Materials Sciences student Zack Jeanrenaud  
• Biotechnology student Rachel Ng 

And the staff team was: 

• Director of Cross-Curricular Mathematics Education, Dr Philip Ramsden 
• Professor of Materials Chemistry, Milo Shaffer 
• Professor of Cell Biology and Infectious Diseases, Jake Baum  

Here’s what they had to say about the gameshow: 

Biotechnology student, Rachel Ng said: “It was such an incredible experience participating in a BBC radio quiz, and I walked away with so much new knowledge! One question that genuinely intrigued​ me was directed towards my professor, Jake Baum, who was asked to explain the meaning of 'S' in the 'N4HCS' scaffold of antimalarial drugs.

"The question piqued my curiosity, and after the quiz, I was keen to learn more about 'N4HC' but found nothing online. Later, I discovered the producers had cleverly deep-dived into each professor's expertise while crafting the quiz questions, singling out 'N4HCS' from a paper co-authored by Professor Baum. This highlights the rapid pace at which the pharmaceutical industry is innovating to develop groundbreaking treatments for patients."

Dr Philip Ramsden said: “I really enjoyed it! I managed to dredge up some hard-ish maths and some nice general knowledge, while getting a bit of arithmetic badly wrong, so a mixed bag as far as my professional reputation is concerned. 

“The weird thing about going up against students, especially from my department, is that you can't switch off the wish for them to do well. Every time Sorcha (who was brilliant) came up with a great answer, I was delighted, before thinking "Hang on a minute, she's the opposition. I'm only sad I can't do it more than once.”  

Professor Jake Baum added: “That was terrific fun, and enlightening too. Turns out that my general knowledge appears to be better than my specialist knowledge! Who’d have guessed that the S in?N4HCMS (a new class of antimalarial drug) would stand for sulphonamide? I went and looked it up after the show, turns out it was my lab that discovered them in 2018. Sigh! Thank goodness it's a team game.” 

Listen to the broadcast 

The Imperial College London round of BBC Radio 4’s The 3rd Degree will be broadcast at 15:00 on Monday 6 July 2020. Listen live or on catchup at The 3rd Degree show page.  

The broadcast is part of the show's tenth series airing this summer – each of the six episodes in the series having been recorded in a different UK university.