Eric Mukherjee

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Eric Mukherjee
Noted subjects General, History, Science, Mythology, and Comic Books
Past colleges Brown (2007-2009), University of Pennsylvania (2010-2018)
High school Washburn Rural High School
Stats HDWhite • NAQT

Eric Mukherjee played as an undergraduate at Brown, helping them to several second place finishes at ACF Nationals before leading the Penn team for several years as an MD-PhD student.

Eric is well regarded as a biology and chemistry player, as well as an overall science player and generalist with secondary strengths in history. He was consistently ranked among the top 10 active players in a number of individual player rankings throughout the 2010s.

Playing Career

Undergraduate

Eric was previously a student at Brown, where he served as vice president of the club after randomly running into Jerry Vinokurov in the mailroom. Alongside "fearless leader" Jerry, Eric helped the team to 2nd place at 2007 ACF Nationals and 2008 ACF Nationals.

After he and level-headed teammate Dennis Jang almost spontaneously combusted due to the sheer amount of funn in 2007 Moon Pie, they resolved to write a good tournament and to punish the MIT team who wrote the set. They accomplished this with the second EFT set and Deep Bench 2007 at Brandeis respectively.

Alongside Matt Weiner, Jerry Vinokurov, and Jonathan Magin, Eric won the 2008 Chicago Open. With Ted Gioia, Dallas Simons, and Jerry Vinokurov, he placed 2nd at the 2009 Chicago Open while tying Vinokurov in scoring.

Interviews for medical school prevented Eric from attending either nationals in 2009.

Graduate

Eric's first several years at Penn saw a decrease in involvement due to the rigors of medical school. After placing 2nd at the 2010 ICT and 6th at ACF Nats (one place behind his alma mater Brown), Eric missed the entire 2011 nationals season within the death grip of a hospital ward (as a student, not a patient). In 2012, Eric pulled an otherwise D2 squad of Saajid Moyen, Patrick Liao, and James Lasker to 4th place at 2012 ACF Nationals and 11th at ICT.

After gaining Dallas Simons, a Penn team led by Eric would place 3rd at the 2013 ICT, 2014 ICT, and 2014 ACF Nationals and 4th at the 2013 ACF Nationals. Dallas would be replaced by Chris Chiego in the 2014-2015 season when Penn won 2nd at 2015 ICT and 1st at 2015 ACF Nationals, the only championship to date for both Eric and the Penn team. During this championship run, Eric adopted a strategy of casually eating an apple during tournaments to regain focus. Eric also wrote a micro-history of the ACF Nationals Final describing the experience.

After winning the title, Penn continued to be a top bracket regular - alongside Jaimie Carlson, JinAh Kim, Paul Lee, Max Smiley, Aidan Mehigan and others, Eric placed 7th at 2016 ICT, 7th at 2017 ACF Nationals, 4th at 2018 ICT, and 2nd at 2018 ACF Nationals.

Because Eric was very sick during SCT, Penn did not qualify for the 2017 ICT; they were not awarded a wildcard bid.

Outside of his playing career, Eric also became a regular moderator at a number of high school events in Philadelphia beyond the Penn Quaker Fall Open tournaments and was accidentally featured on the local news while reading at the Philadelphia_City-Wide_Championship.

Apart from his leadership of Penn A, Eric also contributed to winning teams at Chicago Open in 2012, 2014, and 2016 - the 2014 win saw him replace Dennis Loo to earn Virginia their Triple Crown.

Post-Graduate

After completing his graduate studies at Penn, Eric continued to play open tournaments such as the 2019 Chicago Open.

In April 2020, Eric confessed to cheating at the 2020 Terrapin Open Discord Mirror. Notably, he had denied the allegations until convincing statistical evidence emerged. He has since been de facto banned from playing online tournaments.

Writing/Editing Work

Eric is regarded as one of the best science writers in contemporary quizbowl and is a prolific writer and editor who contributed significantly to the current state of science in quiz bowl. More recently his questions have been criticized for their focus on the med school curriculum and their tendency to be on things that Eric had previously negged. His writing outside of science also features a distinctive abundance of vanity trash questions reflecting Eric's "geek trash" interests like comic books and deep cuts from the Star Wars expanded universe.

Eric, Matt Jackson, and others helped edit many of NHBB's tournaments in 2015 as part of the 5th of March Incident. He has occasionally contributed to NHBB, PACE, and HSAPQ since then.

College

High School

  • PACE NSC - Head Editor (2012, 2013), Contributor (2008, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018)
  • HSAPQ (formerly)
  • NHBB - Editor, Regional A-Set and Nationals sets (2015), sporadic contributor after
  • IHO - Editor, Cold War History event (2016), History of STEM event (2018)
  • NASAT - Head Editor (2018), contributor in almost every other year
  • NAQT - Writer

Forthcoming

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