I grew up catching praying mantises and damselflies in rural Kentucky. As an undergraduate at Centre College, I majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; I spent my summers taking care of sick children at the Center for Courageous Kids and doing research in organic chemistry and neuroscience. I matriculated directly to the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and completed my first three years of medical school. I then moved to Janelia Research Campus as a HHMI Medical Research Fellow; there I studied the neural and genetic bases of behavior. As a PhD student in Zoology, I will study adaptive behavior. All animals integrate information about past experience into future decisions; this is the basis of learning and memory. I am proposing to write a specific memory and read the memory trace in the brain. I will use the fruit fly as a model organism. By understanding mechanisms of memory storage, we can begin to investigate changes in memory formation in disease; this may allow us to develop rational therapies for disorders of memory formation, including autism and Alzheimer’s disease. After completing my PhD, I will return to finish my last year of medical school and pursue a career as a child neurologist and neuroscientist, using my lab to better understand the patients I see in clinic.
Centre College
D’Arcy Williams [2019] has just been appointed CEO of Bite Back, a UK-based charity campaigning to ensure that every young person has access to healthy and nutritious food. After leaving […]
Three Gates Cambridge Scholars debate the question “How do we address the challenges of an ageing world?” in the final episode of the second series of our podcast, So, now […]
Health is a huge focus of many Gates Cambridge Scholars, whether directly for those studying medical-related subjects or access to health services, or indirectly as there are so many multi-layered […]
Bangladeshi and Pakistani women in London face intersecting barriers to finding good work, including racism, religious and gender discrimination and limited workplace flexibility – and cultural norms, while they may […]
Friederike Hedley [2024] is researching the impact of uncertainty on cognitive and neural processing, with a focus on mental health problems and the developing brain. She recently published two journal […]
Michael Salka is interested in pushing the boundaries of architecture, but also in learning from past knowledge about bio-based building materials and how they adapt to different conditions. He began […]
Efforts to slow the climate crisis have long sought to harness nature, often through carbon “offsets”, aimed at bolstering forests, wetlands and agriculture, but have generally had only marginal success […]
Three Gates Cambridge Scholars debated whether gender equality is going backwards in the seventh episode of the current series of the ‘So Now What’ podcast. Reetika Subramanian [2019], William McInerney […]
When it comes to impact on society, Gates Cambridge Scholars have been improving the lives of others in many different ways, from work on social inclusion and social enterprise and […]
What helps birds adapt to human-modified environments and can they be trained to do so? While experts have talked about the importance of behavioural flexibility for some time, as expressed […]
Mike Martin has both studied history and been involved in historic developments in his home country, Russia. Mike [2025] was forced to flee Russia after the invasion of Ukraine when, […]