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Benjamin Cocanougher
- Alumni
- United States
- 2016 PhD Zoology
- St Catharine's College
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.
Previous Education
Centre College
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Latest News
Scholar is co-first author of paper on early embryo development
A Gates Cambridge is co-first author on a paper which identifies key molecular events in the developing human embryo between days 7 and 14 – one of the most mysterious, yet critical, stages of our development. Bailey Weatherbee [2019], who is doing a PhD in Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, is co-first author of the paper […]
Scholar turns playwright to get her research out to a wider audience
Dr Mona Jebril [2012] did her PhD in Education on the multiple ways occupation and conflict in the Middle East have affected the mobility of academics in Gaza, their academic freedom and attempts to reform the higher education system. She is now an interdisciplinary social scientists and Research Fellow at Cambridge University’s Centre for Business […]
Scholar takes part in Deep Dive into tackling educational inequality
A Gates Cambridge Scholar participated in the first Gates Notes Deep Dive series with Bill Gates, where he invited early career scholars from around the US to talk about how data can help improve educational outcomes for Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds. Michael Meaney [2016 – pictured right] was one of several graduate students who […]
Scholar to co-lead new entrepreneurship initiative
King’s College has set up a new Entrepreneurship Lab to equip King’s students with entrepreneurial skills and support those wishing to explore a career path in innovation, entrepreneurship and business. Gates Cambridge Scholar Kamiar Mohaddes [2005, pictured below] is co-director of the project and says he is keen for scholars to help mentor students. The King’s Entrepreneurship […]
Teenagers at greatest risk of self-harming could be identified almost a decade earlier
Researchers have identified two subgroups of adolescents who self-harm and have shown that it is possible to predict those at-risk individuals almost a decade before they begin self-harming. According to a new study, whose first author is Gates Cambridge’s Stepheni Uh [2018], while sleep problems and low self-esteem are common risk factors, there are two […]
Broader response to pandemic needed in complex emergencies
Although the impact of Covid-19 on people’s health in Somalia remains unclear, its effect on their daily lives, income and livelihoods was significant, making the country less able to withstand future shocks, according to a new study. The study, published in Conflict and Health and led by Gates Cambridge Scholar Dorien Braam [2018 ], found […]
Scholar named emerging leader in dementia research
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has been recognised as an Emerging Leader in dementia research by the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI). Dr Julie Qiaojin Lin [2013] has been named one of 11 Emerging Leaders in the new initiative of the UK DRI. She is a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow in Professor Giovanna Mallucci’s […]
The Scholar 2021 goes live
The 2021 edition of The Scholar, the Gates Cambridge magazine, is now out and celebrates the scholarship’s 20th anniversary with many of the articles focused on the theme of memory. For the first time the magazine, which is edited and written by Scholars and Alumni, has gone entirely online. Fang Liu [2020], editor of The […]
‘People more afraid of catching Covid-19 are more judgemental’
Researchers studying how we make moral judgements have found that people more concerned about catching Covid-19 were more disapproving of the wrong-doings of others, whatever they were doing wrong. The researchers, including first author Robert Henderson [2018], say their findings are evidence that our morality is shaped by various emotions and intuitions, of which concerns […]
How journalists respond to anti-media populism
Many journalists have adopted a policy of leaning to the right in the face of anti-media populism, according to a new study based on the situation in Israel. The study, The Strategic Bias: How Journalists Respond to Antimedia Populism, published in the International Journal of Press/Politics, is by Gates Cambridge Scholar Ayala Panievsky. It looks […]
A shared history of ideas
Nick Posegay has just been awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Cambridge’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies for a project on “Interfaith Exchange in the Intellectual History of Middle Eastern Languages”. The three-year fellowship follows his PhD on the religious and linguistic multiculturalism of the medieval Middle East. The Fellowship will involve […]
