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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
Video helps to boost teacher effectiveness
The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) has launched a video featuring a Gates Cambridge alumnus discussing his work on a World Bank project that benchmarks teacher policies around the world. In the video, Alejandro Ganimian – currently a doctoral student in Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education at HGSE – presents the soon-to-be-released website for SABER […]
The origins of globalisation
Most development specialists focus on the 1970s and onwards when they talk about the origins of the current global situation, but Luke Fletcher [2010] believes it is vital to look at the decades before that to truly understand the origins of the current system. He is doing his PhD in Politics and International Studies on […]
Alumnus oversees major police operation
A Gates Cambridge Alumnus oversaw the policing of a major political rally in Germany in early August. Dirk-Hinrich Haar [2005] is Superintendent for Germany’s Federal Police and Deputy Chief of the Hanover Federal Police Department. He oversaw a major rally by far right activists in Germany as chief of staff to the operational commander. The […]
How to be a Gates Cambridge Scholar
Do you want to apply for a prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship? Then find out all the information you need at a webinar on 6 September. The webinar will be hosted by the Gates Cambridge Trust and current Gates Cambridge Scholars and will cover details on both applying for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and information on […]
New GCAA directors named
The new Gates Cambridge Alumni Association Board of Directors has been announced. Co-Chairs are Nathan George (USA, 2003) and Mamta Thangaraj (India, 2003). Nathan, the GCAA’s former Membership Director (USA), is pursuing his PhD in Finance and Real Estate at UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business while managing a multi-million dollar real estate development portfolio. Mamta previously […]
Why the UK needs a science-based drug policy
Why do some people become addicts and others do not? In the UK about 6% of young people try cocaine. Despite the incredible addictive powers of the drug, only about 10% of these users become addicted. What determines who becomes an addict and who does not? My research aims to understand why certain people are […]
Listening to women’s history
Indian women’s accounts of the impact of partition have been little heard. Anjali Datta wants to focus not only on how the partition of 1947 affected them, but on the longer term effect of that impact on the history of modern-day Delhi. “In most histories of partition women have not had a voice. It was […]
The educational impact of the Arab Spring
What will the wider impact of the Arab Spring be on social policies around the Middle East region? Gates Cambridge Scholar Elect Mona Jebril is interested in looking at the effect of changing attitudes to education in Egypt on higher education in Gaza. “Egypt and Gaza have a close relationship. From 1948 to 1994 Palestinian […]
Mutating proteins
Scientists have used bioinformatics approaches to shed new light on the way our bodies produce proteins, which could help design therapeutic strategies for tissue-specific diseases such as cancer. Next-Generation Sequencing technologies have enabled researchers to discover that most human genes are alternatively spliced, a mechanism that allows our genes to produce multiple versions of a […]
Good neighbours
Derron Wallace’s research trip to Ethiopia didn’t begin well. The person he stayed with was arrested and Derron was not allowed to access any of his belongings or his room. He had no money, no food and nowhere to stay. He went to a local barbershop and spoke to residents there, many of whom gave […]
