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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
Seeds for all seasons
Can farmers in developing countries mitigate the effects of climate change by diversifying their crop choices? Stella Nordhagen’s PhD, which she will complete this year, looks at how farmers’ crop choices relate to the incidence of environmental shocks such as droughts. Her fieldwork was done mainly in Papua New Guinea in collaboration with Biodiversity International, […]
Gates Cambridge welcomes 51 new Scholars
Fifty-one of the world’s most academically brilliant and socially committed young people from 24 countries have been selected as Gates Cambridge Scholars and will begin their postgraduate courses at the University of Cambridge this October. They include the first two Scholars from Egypt. Competition for the Scholarships is fierce. The 51 successful candidates were selected […]
Dalai Lama to speak at Global Scholars Symposium
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet will be visiting Cambridge on April 19 and 20 to speak at the Global Scholars Symposium. Founded in 2008 by Gates Cambridge Scholars, the Global Scholars Symposium (GSS) brings together the world’s leading scholars studying on Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, Churchill, Chevening, Clarendon, Weidenfeld, Commonwealth and Gates Cambridge […]
Creating an environment for success
Andrea Pizziconi [2003] believes higher education is the engine for the emerging world’s economic and social development and that the learning environment is crucial to any students’ success. She is currently working with universities and governments across Africa to put her development experience in the US into action on a new continent. “It’s a human […]
The evolution of inflammatory disease
Some variants in our genes that contribute to a person’s risk for inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease or rheumatoid arthritis, have been the target of natural selection over the course of human history, according to a study led by Gates Cambridge Alumnus Towfique Raj [2005]. He was part of a research team […]
Newborn health
Said Saab’s [2012] research looks at improving breathing in newborns. “When babies are born prematurely their lungs are deficient in surfactant, the fluid which is essential for them to breath properly. While this can be given synthetically, our work is looking at how to improve an already existing clinical surfactant preparation,” says Said. He has […]
From climate change to maternal ‘insanity’
Food insecurity, climate change, maternal ‘insanity’ and the future of medicine are the topics of the last internal symposium this term. The symposium takes place on 11 March from 7-9pm in the Gates Scholars Common Room. Jacquelyne Poon [2012], who is doing a PhD in Plant Sciences, will discuss food insecurity and crop protection. She […]
21st century trading
US attempts to create a Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement to counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific region could threaten financial stability by making it impossible for those nations taking part to regulate cross-border finance, according to a new report on international trade and regulations. The report, Capital Account Regulations and the Trading System: a Compatibility […]
Health data provides rich resource
One of the richest data sources of non-communicable diseases in Africa has been published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. One of the first authors of the paper is Georgina Murphy [2009], who is doing her PhD in Public Health and Primary Care. The paper, The general population cohort in rural south-western Uganda: a platform […]
Scientists discover pathways to liver disease
An international team of scientists that included Gates Cambridge Scholar Siddhartha Kar has shed new light on the genetic underpinnings of the most common autoimmune disease of the liver, which causes scarring and cirrhosis and can require a liver transplant. Primary biliary cirrhosis or PBC is a disease in which the body’s own immune defence […]
