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
A Gates Cambridge Scholar will be showcasing a film on her research on DNA origami at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas this month. Kerstin Goepfrich [2013] has written and produced […]
I know many people say that the Gates Cambridge scholarship has been life changing, but I really mean it,” says Pete Manasantivongs [2001]. He was one of the first intake […]
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has won a prestigious international prize for musicological studies for his work in bringing back to life an early 19th century piece of Peruvian-Bolivian music which […]
Chimpanzee aggression is not the result of interaction with humans and is something they naturally do, according to a new study co-authored by a former Gates Cambridge Scholar. The new […]
When Justine Drennan arrived in Phnom Penh, she had little experience of journalism. Her time at Cambridge where she did a master’s in international relations had, however, given her a […]
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has set up an ethical leadership awards programme in Utah to highlight best practices and inspire others. Libby Blanchard [2012], who is doing a PhD in […]
Coral trout can now join chimpanzees as the only non-human species that can choose the right situation and the right partner to get the best result when collaboratively working, according […]
Stijn De Schepper [2002] is leading an international research collaboration which aims to understand climate change in the Pliocene – a geological time period from 5 to 2.5 million years […]
A paper by a Gates Cambridge Scholar aimed at helping social science researchers embarking on fieldwork for the first time has been published by the Oxford Journal of Human Rights […]
New research on the treatment of ‘hardcore’ female Mau Mau prisoners by the British in the late 1950s sheds new light on how ideas about gender, deviancy and mental health […]