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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
New thinking for education leaders
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has co-authored a new book which is being described by leading educationalists as transforming the way schools think about change. The Pruning Principle offers a new approach to educational leadership, drawing inspiration from horticulture to address the chronic issues of overwork and inefficiency in schools. The authors, Gates Cambridge Scholar Dr Simon […]
A passion for biotech innovation in Africa
Taryn Adams has long been interested in bridging the gap between science and business in order to ensure science has practical, useful applications. Coming from South Africa, she says the innovation that results from linking science and business, particularly in biotech, is still in its early stages, but she feels there is room to make […]
Caught on camera: how we see the world through digital images
Emmanuel Iduma will be one of the first people to do the University of Cambridge’s new PhD in Digital Humanities and he brings a wealth of experience in multimedia to the subject. Emmanuel [2024] is not only an acclaimed writer, but has been fascinated by the role of photography for many years – how photographs […]
Tributes paid to Arif Naveed – ‘a brilliant scholar and an even better human being’
It is with great sadness that the Trust has learned of the death of Gates Cambridge Scholar Arif Naveed [2014]. Arif did his PhD in Education at the University of Cambridge and won the Bill Gates Sr Award in 2018. This is an award nominated by other scholars and their nominations show the impact Arif […]
Tributes to Arif Naveed
“Arif Naveed’s mission as a sociologist and economist of education was to achieve social justice for marginalised groups, especially those in poor communities. His internationally valued contribution was to design theoretical and methodological frameworks to analyse intergenerational, gendered social mobility in low-middle income countries like Pakistan. He brought to Cambridge his wide experience of framing […]
Healing through regenerative medicine
Kerem Çitak [2024] comes from a medical family, but he opted instead to go into Materials Science and Bioengineering. At the heart of his work at Cambridge, however, is an emphasis on healing. He arrived there through his interest in materials science and its potential to tackle global challenges. Indeed it is at the intersection of […]
Celebrating 50 years of Cairo Genizah research
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has co-authored a new book which brings together the research and memories of three generations of Cairo Genizah scholars and celebrates 50 years of progress in the field since the founding of the Cambridge Genizah Research Unit in 1974. Genizah means a hidden storage room and almost one thousand years ago, […]
The Holy Spirit: its meaning and its potential misuse
Avweroswo Akpojaro was not very religious as a child, but it was when he was reading the Bible as a teenager that he had a powerful religious experience and started to study religious texts. He always had questions, however, relating to Christian practice. Although he studied Geology at university and went into teaching, he continued […]
The cost of ecological disaster
Not so long ago, prevailing work on the macroeconomics of climate change contended that – while set to fiscally devastate low-income countries near the equator – many cooler, wealthier nations will escape the financial fallout and even profit from warmer climes. By 2017, influential studies had fed into an International Monetary Fund global report showing […]
Navigating the politics of sex work
Sharmila Parmanand’s research on sex work was already having an impact beyond academia while she was at Cambridge, but she is now writing a book which she hopes will bring the issues to a wider audience. While at Cambridge, Sharmila [2016] took part in an all-female panel discussion on the future of UK foreign policy […]
Why a one-size-fits-all approach to biodiversity won’t work
Carmen Lacambra Segura is keen to tackle the challenges affecting biodiversity from an interdisciplinary perspective which takes into account all the different factors that affect it. That means taking more contextualised approaches and using data to make positive progress. She has worked for over 30 years on resilience and climate adaptation, integrating science and evidence-based […]
