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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
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 […]
Challenging scientific bias
While scientific research pushes the boundaries of human knowledge for the better, the culture of extreme competition within academia can give rise to unfair advantages. It doesn’t need to be that way, claims Gates Cambridge Scholar Caitlin Casey [2007], who recently published a column in Nature suggesting one way academia can become more inclusive and […]
From the lab to the patient
Nouran Abdelfattah [2013] is passionate about translating research into drugs that can treat cancer. Her master’s research in translational medicine will build on her undergraduate research on T-cell Acute Lymphobalstic Leukaemia. Children who relapse with the condition have less than a 30% chance of survival. Higher mortality rates associated with chemotherapeutic drug resistance have led […]
Synaesthesia more common in autism
People with autism are more likely to also have synaesthesia, suggests new research published in the journal Molecular Autism. The research was carried out by Gates Cambridge Alumna Donielle Johnson as part of her master’s degree in Medical Sciences. Synaesthesia involves people experiencing a ‘mixing of the senses’, for example, seeing colours when they hear […]
VC, Chancellor and Provost to address internal symposium
The Vice Chancellor and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and the Provost of the Gates Cambridge Trust will speak at a Gates Cambridge internal symposium for the first time next week. The Vice-Chancellor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz will talk about his role, the Chancellor Lord Sainsbury will speak about his charity the Gatsby Foundation and […]
Secular and domestic
A book about the history of one of Cambridge’s landmark buildings – the Master’s Lodge at St John’s College – has been published by a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Richard Butler’s book, Secular & Domestic: George Gilbert Scott and the Master’s Lodge of St John’s College, Cambridge, is his first and traces the architectural history of […]
Singing with many voices
Just as she was preparing to travel to Cambridge to take up her masters in choral studies, Erin Plisco found out that she and her high school choir had scooped one of the most prestigious choral singing prizes in the US – the American Prize. The prize came three years after she started teaching at […]
In step with romance
Men who are in love adapt their walking pace so they are in step with their partner, according to new research led by a Gates Cambridge Alumna. Cara Wall-Scheffler‘s research, published in PLOS ONE, found that men walking with their romantic partner walked at a significantly slower pace to match their partner’s pace while women’s […]
A year of silence on a mountain and other stories
Want to know about medicine in rural India or life as a red-haired Minnesotan in South Korea? Maybe you’d be more interested in sustainable beer brewing in Burkina Faso or spending a year of silence on a mountain top? Next week’s Scholars’ Stories session will see four Scholars open up about parts of their non-academic […]
Treating countries like businesses
Arbitrators in international investment cases play a huge role in creating law and steering state behaviour, according to research by a Gates Cambridge Scholar which will be presented at an international conference this week. Todd Tucker will be presenting his research on International Investment Arbitration at a World Trade Institute conference in Bern on Friday. […]
