News
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
- Share
Latest News
An anthropology of ourselves
Rachel Bolten is fascinated by the crossover between politics, literature and history. It is that fascination which will bring her to the University of Cambridge this autumn to study the British Mass Observation Study, an ongoing oral history archive started during World War II. It provides a “compelling analog” to Rachel’s undergraduate thesis on the […]
Positive role models
Women mentors have played a big role in Erin Kara’s career in the male-dominated world of astrophysics and she is determined eventually to return the favour. Erin [2011], whose PhD research at the University of Cambridge will centre on supermassive black holes, previously studied at Columbia’s all-female Barnard College and singles out one professor who […]
Ideas Lab – big ideas for the future
The first Gates Ideas Lab aimed at fleshing out the big ideas scholars hope to tackle in their research was hosted in the Scholars’ Room this week. The Ideas Lab, held on 11 June, featured presentations by current Scholars and Alumni, the GIL presented a diverse array of ideas from seven members of the community. Convened by […]
Nation building or state making?
A Gates Cambridge scholar has won the British Association for South Asian Studies Annual Prize 2012 for her paper on India’s attempts to integrate its isolated north-east frontier to the rest of the country. Bérénice Guyot-Réchard‘s paper, ‘Nation-buildling or state-making? India’s North-East Frontier and the ambiguities of Nehruvian developmentalism’, won the best paper and presentation by […]
Park life
Libby Blanchard [2012] grew up in America’s national parks. It was perhaps the perfect upbringing for someone who is interested in biodiversity conservation as well as poverty alleviation. Libby, who has been working for a fair trade coffee importing business, will be studying for an MPhil in Environment, Society and Development at the University of […]
Structural change
Researchers have conducted a detailed study of the protein structures behind diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, which could open up new avenues for research and potential treatment. The study, Structure of an Intermediate State in Protein Folding and Aggregation, is published in the current edition of the prestigious journal Science. Gates Cambridge alumnus Paul Robustelli […]
Sustainable solar power
Gates Cambridge scholar Talia Gershon has won the Tomorrow’s Answers Today 2012 UK Poster Competition for her research on sustainable solar energy. For her poster presentation Talia [2008], who is studying low-cost solar cell materials for her PhD in Materials Science, proposed solutions to some of the issues related to finding a sustainable supply of solar […]
A new vision for Gates Cambridge
Over 250 academics, business and social leaders and Gates Cambridge Alumni and Scholars attended the unveiling of the new vision for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships on Friday. At the event, which included the second annual graduation dinner for Scholars, it was announced that Bill and Melinda Gates had agreed to become Honorary Patrons of the […]
Gates Cambridge: Vision for the Future
A 20 minute film setting out the achievements of the Gates Cambridge programme and its vision for the future, screened at the event of the same name on 1 June 2012.
The ethics of addiction vaccines
Should people who are addicted to or might become addicted to drugs be given a vaccine to combat substance-use disorders or could this create new ethical problems? A new article on the moral issues raised by the development of a unique class of immunotherapies, co-authored by a Gates scholar, is published this month. The article, entitled […]
