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
For the weekend 16-18 April 2010, Gates Alumni from all over Europe are warmly invited to the Inaugural European Gates Alumni event taking place in the vibrant city of Berlin, […]
After volunteering to help with the Winter Olympics in her hown town of Vancouver, Gates Scholar Julia Fan Li was lucky enough to be nominated as one of the four […]
Gates aluma Heather Agnew (2003) has won the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Caltech Student Prize. Heather (pictured far right) received the $30,000 prize for her work on “Protein Capture Agents for Improving […]
Sreenivasa Rao Kondapally Seshasai is the co-author of an article this month in The Lancet, the world’s leading platform for peer-reviewed publications in medical science. The article, of which a […]
Professor Joshua Silver gave his Gates Scholars Distinguished Lecture – entitled ‘How we do we really bring vision corrective to those that need it in the developing world?’ – at […]
The Trust is sad to announce the death of Dr Joseph Lim – a Gates alumnus from the Philippines who undertook the PhD in Pharmacology at Selwyn College from 2004. […]
Movie director and writer, Rupert Isaacson, spoke about about his experience filming The Horse Boy at the Gates Scholars’ Distinguished Lecture on 14 January 2010 . The documentary feature film, […]
In early February 2010 the British Ambassador to the USA, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, generously hosted a cocktail reception at the British Embassy in honour of ten years of the Gates […]
The Gates Cambridge Trust is delighted to announce that it has awarded Gates Cambridge Scholarships to 29 talented American students to pursue Masters or PhD degrees at the University of […]
Professor Robert Lethbridge, who will succeed Dr Gordon Johnson as Provost of the Gates Cambridge Trust from 1 October 2010, has been profiled in the Times Higher Education Supplement. Professor […]