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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
Talking to the multitude
How many people heard the great speeches of the past – from the Gettysburg Address to the Sermon on the Mount – and just what could they hear? New research by Gates Cambridge Scholar Braxton Boran [2009] and Agnieszka Roginska at New York University’s Music and Audio Research Lab studied the potential size of the […]
40 years of science and policy fellowships
Gates Cambridge Scholar Andrew Robertson has been featured as one of 40 Science and Technology Policy Fellows at the American Assocation for the Advancement of Science to mark the fellowship’s 40th anniversary. The 40, 10 from each decade, represent the 2,800 fellows who have been elected since the fellowship was established in 1973. The aim […]
The birds and the bees
News headlines proclaim a crisis in bee numbers and say the implications for agriculture are huge. Cecilia Martinez Perez’s research focuses on the history of plant pollination and looks at what makes a plant more appealing to pollinators like bees. The research could eventually lead scientists to develop ways to improve crops in ways that […]
Social innovator
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has been appointed director of a US university initiative to promote social innovation. Noah Isserman [2008] will take up the first assistant professorship at the University of Illinois to cross the departments of Business Administration and Social Work. The role involves facilitating and directing the creation of a new, University-wide initiative […]
Changing perceptions
Meng Liang [2010] is interested in the complexity of the relationship between Japanese employers and Chinese migrant workers. She says the Japanese press have tended to focus on the negative and depicted the relationship as solely one of exploitation, but her research has found a much more complex and nuanced situation based on mutual dependency. […]
Carers contribute unique ideas about social care
Carers who are involved in discussions on healthcare services can contribute unique and useful views on how services are delivered, according to the first study to quantify the value of their contribution. The study, “Exploring the boundary of a specialist service for adults with intellectual disabilities using a Delphi study: a quanti?cation of stakeholder participation”, […]
How will the Immigration Bill affect victims of abuse?
Victims of exploitation and abuse face possible deportation if the UK Immigration Bill becomes law, according to a Gates Cambridge Scholar. In an article for Open Democracy this week, Halliki Voolma cites the example of two women who were trafficked from Zimbabwe and forced into domestic slavery and child prostitution in the UK. She asks […]
Understanding alien limbs
Scientists have moved one step closer to understanding a syndrome which causes people to progressively lose control of their limbs and can result in dementia. Corticobasal syndrome is a rare condition, often expressed in a difficulty to control a limb. In most people, this is usually their hand or arm, but sometimes a person’s leg […]
From phantom limbs to paleobiology
Phantom limbs, paleobiology, rural women’s perceptions of claiming inheritance rights and how different land use affects forest-dwelling animals will be the subjects of the last internal symposium this term. Four Gates Cambridge Scholars will present their research to fellow Scholars and their guests at the symposium on 3rd December. Kate Crowcroft [2011], who is doing […]
In the right place at the right time
Dhiraj Nayyar has just been named runner-up in the international journalism award, the Bastiat Prize. The award, presented by the Reason Foundation in New York, honours journalism “that best demonstrates the importance of individual liberty and free markets with originality, wit, and eloquence”. Dhiraj was scooped by two journalists, Newsday’s Lane Filler and Ross Clark […]
