Teen “Jeopardy!” Contestant Donates $10K of His Winnings to Cancer Research

The donation was in honor of host Alex Trebek, who’s been public about his fight against cancer.

A teenager who won the 2019 “Jeopardy!” teen tournament decided to donate some of his $100,000 prize to pancreatic cancer research in honor of the show’s longtime host Alex Trebek.

Avi Gupta, a Columbia University freshman, won in June and said in a Twitter clip that Trebek is “someone I looked up to my whole life.”

“I’m honored to make this donation to the Knight Institute to support him and the millions of other people suffering from pancreatic cancer,” Gupta said.

Trebek has been the host of “Jeopardy!” for 35 years. He announced in March that he had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. Trebek has continued to host the show despite having to undergo chemotherapy treatments and has said he will continue has long as his skills do not diminish.

Gupta gave the donation of $10,314 to OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute on Monday. He said the last three digits of the donation price are particularly meaningful to him because they are the first three digits of pi.

“To me, it represents my lifelong love of learning and mathematics that eventually led me to appear on ‘Jeopardy!’ and has propelled what I’ve been doing ever since,” Gupta explained.