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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
Film of Gates Cambridge vision event released
A short film of this summer’s unveiling of the new vision for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships has been released. The film includes footage of the event which was attended by over 250 academics, business and social leaders and Gates Cambridge Alumni and Scholars in June. In the film, Gates Cambridge Scholars and Alumni talk about […]
The young brain
How young adults remember events may occur in a different part of the brain to older adults, meaning that perhaps a developmental change takes place in the brain in older adulthood, according to new research. The research, by Gates Scholar Elect Brielle Stark, has been accepted for publication in the Yale Review for Undergraduate Research […]
Divided city
Can culture act as a bridge to connect groups who are in conflict? How do divided cities operate on a day to day basis? And how do people negotiate contested spaces in cities as politicised as Jerusalem? Hanna Baumann [2012] has been fascinated by the subject of divided cities since she was young. Her PhD […]
Aid agencies ‘failing urban displaced’
The humanitarian sector has failed to act on the issue of urban displacement and has struggled to employ existing knowledge and to adapt practice, according to a new report co-edited by a Gates alumna. The report, Urban vulnerability and displacement: a review of current issues, is published in a special edition of the peer-reviewed journal […]
A passion for science
As a promising young student, Chidiebere Akusobi took part in a programme for inner city students in New York which gained him entry to an elite private school. From there it was a short step to Yale, where he has been studying evolutionary biology for the last four years. Now he is about to embark […]
Original sources
A Gates Cambridge alumnus has discovered an overlooked medieval manuscript – a missing historical link – that answers some old questions and raises many new questions about how Gregorian chant spread from Rome to the rest of Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries. Daniel DiCenso [2005] discovered that a manuscript he had travelled to […]
Giving something back
Niraj Lal is having a double celebration this week after winning a gold award for his voluntary education outreach work and having a paper on his solar power research published in the world’s leading condensed matter physics journal. Niraj was awarded a UK Student Volunteering Gold Award from the Office of External Affairs at the […]
Scholar scoops poetry prize
Gates Cambridge Scholar Kate Crowcroft has won the John Kinsella / Tracy Ryan Poetry Prize – the most prestigious poetry prize at Cambridge. Kate won joint first place for her poem ‘Poemtree’ which she read at a prize-giving event earlier this month. The Australian poet and writer John Kinsella spoke at the event about the […]
