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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
Gates Cambridge Scholars’ Distinguished Lecture – Niklas Zennstrom
Niklas Zennström, the Founder of Skype and Kazaa, gives a Gates Distinguished Lecture on the secrets of being a successful entrepreneur.
Gates scholar hosts talk on charity advertising
Gates scholar Christopher Geissler is hosting a debate on when pictures of suffering children step over the line and become exploitative at this year’s Cambridge Festival of Ideas. ‘How far is too far? Charity advertising and images of suffering children’ takes place on Monday and will address such topics as whether depicting children who are […]
Gates Alumna shortlisted for prestigious BBC World Challenge Competition
Gates Alumna Leda Smith has been working for a marine conservation organisation which has been selected out of 800 nominations worldwide to become one of the 12 finalists for the prestigious BBC World Challenge competition 2010. Blue Ventures focuses on promoting public health through subsidising solar and fuel efficient stoves in rural Madagascar and South […]
Gates scholars to speak at Cambridge Festival of Ideas
Gates scholars will be speaking about their research and campaigning in areas ranging from citizen journalism and online protests to African enterprise and business networking at this year’s Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Current scholars Joe Bonneau, Andrew Gruen, Julia Fan Li and alumna Robyn Scott will speak at the Future Research Talks on Saturday 23rdOctober […]
Skype co-founder to talk about the secrets of business success
One of the founders of Skype will give some pointers on how to set up “game changing businesses” at a lecture on Tuesday. Niklas Zennström, the Founder of Skype and Kazaa, will give a Gates Distinguished Lecture on the secrets of being a successful entrepreneur. His lecture, Entrepreneurship Revealed: Building Game Changing Businesses, will draw […]
Gates alumnus addresses FDA hearing on neglected diseases
A Gates alumnus has given testimony to a Food and Drug Administration hearing in the US on how to develop drugs for the world’s poorest people. Dr Andrew Robertson, co-founder of the Gates Scholars Alumni Association and Gates Scholars Council and a Trustee of the Gates Cambridge Trust, gave evidence in September to a FDA […]
Scholars hold first internal symposium of the term
The Gates Scholars Council is running its first Internal Symposium of Michaelmas term this week. The symposium includes four presentations by scholars on their research. Mathew Madhavacheril‘s talk “Mapping the Universe: The New Era of Precision Cosmology” will explain the enormous amount of information and observational evidence we get from the radiation left over from […]
New scholar plans surgery exchange programme
A newly arrived Gates scholar plans to set up an international surgery exchange programme. Dr Trevor Ellison [2010] is doing an MBA in management at Cambridge this year which he hopes will help him to set up the programme, initially at Johns Hopkins where he is doing his general surgery residency. The exchange programme he […]
Trevor Ellison
Dr Trevor Ellison grew up with a realisation of the importance of medicine from an early age and this has spurred to set up an international surgery exchange programme to improve treatment around the world. He hopes the MBA in management which he is studying at Cambridge this year, funded by a Gates scholarship, will […]
Gates scholar wins Australian Geographic award
A Gates scholar has been awarded a prestigious Australian Geographic award for a canoe expedition around Indonesia’s Togean Islands which highlighted the impact of overfishing on traditional communities. Alex Vail, who is due to begin a PhD at Cambridge in September, travelled to the Islands with two colleagues. The three were the first people to […]
