Northwestern CSB Alum to Compete on Jeopardy!

Northwestern alumnus Adam Silverman, PhD, Staff Scientist at ADA Forsyth, will compete on Jeopardy! next week. A former Center for Synthetic Biology (CSB) graduate student in the labs of Julius Lucks, co-director of CSB, and (now) external faculty member Michael Jewett, Silverman will appear on Wednesday, March 19 (check local TV listings for airtime).

“I’ve been watching it as far back as I can remember. It was kind of a family tradition, everyone in my house gathering on the couch to watch Wheel of Fortune and then Jeopardy!,” says Silverman.

The competitive streak is strong in the Silverman family.

“My brother was on the show when I was in high school and won $44,000” says Silverman. “He competed in the high school tournament in the 11^th grade. The whole family flew out to LA to watch him do that. It’s been a family ongoing rivalry/drama since then.”

For the past decade, since starting college, Silverman admits he has applied to Jeopardy! every year.  Last July, his wish finally came true when he was contacted by the show’s producers after passing the show’s online quiz.

When they informed him that he could be called at any point over the next two years to be on the show, Silverman recalls joking how angry he’d be if he gets the call right in the middle of an experiment.

As luck would have it, five months later that is exactly what happened.

“Thirty minutes into constant pipetting, my phone rings,” says Silverman. “I thought, oh God, I have to pick this up—maybe it’ll be Jeopardy!.  I look at the caller ID and it was Sony Picture Studio and I thought, ‘you have got to be kidding me’.”

To prepare for his appearance, Silverman leaned on years of watching the show and competing in bar trivia competitions with his equally obsessed friends in the chemical and biological engineering program. In addition to watching hours of the game show, he also made lists of categories that he thought might trip him up. He also created and studied thousands of flashcards.

Arriving on set in Culver City in January, Silverman felt calmer than expected.

“I used to have really bad stage fright, but I think that graduate school burns that out of you. I was much more scared the first time I gave a talk at a conference. Getting up on Jeopardy and holding a buzzer was fine,” says Silverman.

His experience only strengthened Silverman’s admiration for the game show.

“Jeopardy is such an institution,” says Silverman. “The show has remained more or less unchanged for 60 years now—they keep bringing in new questions and new contestants. There are people that haven’t missed an episode of Jeopardy in 30, 40 years. That’s pretty remarkable when you think about it.”

by Lisa La Vallee