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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
Scholars on film
A new series of videos featuring three Gates Cambridge Scholars has been launched on the Gates Cambridge Youtube channel and highlights research on regenerative medicine, how to address chronic hunger without eroding biodiversity and using ICT to promote sustainable development. Libby Blanchard, Timothy Kotin and Stan Wang are interviewed for the videos about their research, […]
Gates Cambridge seeks new Provost
The Gates Cambridge Trust was founded in 2000 from a generous endowment of $210m from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The endowment is managed to provide funds in perpetuity for Scholars to be fully-funded for MPhil or PhD programmes at Cambridge. To date, the Trust has provided Scholarships to over 1000 postgraduate Scholars from […]
The drama of politics
How important is literature to the popularisation of political ideas? In the 18th century, literature was probably the most important popular vehicle of ideas. Despite the audience for plays being less diverse than in Shakespearean times, plays offered a philosophical battlefield for writers. Marc Mierowsky [2011] is researching how ideas of political sovereignty were transmitted […]
Evolutionary tools
A Gates Cambridge Scholar will present her work on the possible relationships between nut-cracking behaviour in chimpanzees and the possible origins of the oldest stone age technologies at an international conference this week. Victoria Tobolsky will speak at the Unravelling Human Origins conference in Cambridge on Friday. She will be presenting a chapter of her […]
Refugee health
Lucinda Lai [2012] spent the year before her MPhil working on mental health issues with Burmese refugees along the Thai/Burma border and is helping to write a book about these experiences. Her organisation’s work involved training local Burmese counsellors and partner organisations in understanding mental health and spotting signs of mental health problems such as […]
Flexible technology
Chris Boyce [2011] has two passions: his research into new energy technologies to mitigate carbon emissions and a family business which he set up just after high school. His research, for which he is doing a PhD in Chemical Engineering, involves imaging and modelling fundamental aspects of fluidised beds to make carbon capture and sequestration […]
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 […]
