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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
Beware of neuro-bunk
Can a cheese sandwich or chocolate help you make better decisions? Can a brain scan cure mental illness? Or are these just two examples of neuro-bunk, where neuroscience is being overly simplified and distorted to sell products and newspapers? In a recent TED talk, neuroscientist and Gates Cambridge Alumna Molly Crockett [2006] talks about how […]
A born activist
Njoki Wamai is on a mission to ensure women’s voices are heard in peace mediation processes. She became interested in the subject following research on women’s experiences of the mediation process that ensued after the contested Kenyan election in 2007. Women had not featured in previous research on the Kenyan mediation process, she says. “I […]
Hair loss is biotech’s gain
A team of biotechnology entrepreneurs from the University of Cambridge has scooped a prestigious prize in the biotech equivalent of Dragon’s Den with their hair loss treatment company. The Calvitium Solutions team scooped the £1,000 Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme (Biotechnology YES) 2012 prize in the annual contest co-organised by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research […]
Language of success
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has become the first Grenadian to win an award for outstanding achievement from the Society for Caribbean Linguistics. Jill Paterson, who is also the first Gates Cambridge Scholar from Grenada, won the John Reinecke Prize for her undergraduate work at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago, where she […]
Can social enterprise be used in global medicine?
Does the social enterprise model have the potential to drive the development of new medicines for low and middle income countries? A new report, authored by Gates Cambridge alumnus Andrew Robertson, suggests that this may be the case. The report, released by the Center for Global Health R&D Policy Assessment and titled The Global Health […]
Engineering a healthier future
What makes specific genes turn on in some cells and not in others? Finding the answer could lead to the development of new treatments which could revolutionise medicine. Luke Edelman’s research takes a biotechnological approach to the issue, looking at the mechanics of how cells organise their genetic information in three dimensions. With an undergraduate […]
A view from abroad
What does the future hold for Spain, a country facing dire economic problems which have exacerbated existing tensions? Many of those relate to Spain’s fractious sense of identity, widely regarded as the biggest political issue in the country for the last 100 years. Witness last week’s elections in Catalunya which centred on calls for Catalan […]
Combatting Cystic Fibrosis
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has been awarded the National Silver Medal of the National Veterinary School of Paris for her thesis on a potential drug treatment of Cystic Fibrosis. Marie Brunet, whose thesis is titled The effect of genistein on Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Regulator (CFTR) mediated chloride secretion: a study on murine colon mucosa, was […]
Next generation leaders in Africa
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has been profiled as one of the next generation of scholars, thinkers and practitioners in the field of peace and security in Africa. Njoki Wamai [2012], who is doing a PhD in Politics and International Studies, was profiled in the African Security Sector Newsletter, which is considered Africa’s leading and most inclusive […]
The history of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood
The exiled Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is preparing to exploit the current crisis in the country to make its return, but is unlikely to link up with the most extreme Islamic militants, according to a forthcoming book written by a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Ashes of Hama: The Perilous History of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, by Raphael […]
