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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
Aid agencies ‘failing urban displaced’
The humanitarian sector has failed to act on the issue of urban displacement and has struggled to employ existing knowledge and to adapt practice, according to a new report co-edited by a Gates alumna. The report, Urban vulnerability and displacement: a review of current issues, is published in a special edition of the peer-reviewed journal […]
A passion for science
As a promising young student, Chidiebere Akusobi took part in a programme for inner city students in New York which gained him entry to an elite private school. From there it was a short step to Yale, where he has been studying evolutionary biology for the last four years. Now he is about to embark […]
Original sources
A Gates Cambridge alumnus has discovered an overlooked medieval manuscript – a missing historical link – that answers some old questions and raises many new questions about how Gregorian chant spread from Rome to the rest of Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries. Daniel DiCenso [2005] discovered that a manuscript he had travelled to […]
Giving something back
Niraj Lal is having a double celebration this week after winning a gold award for his voluntary education outreach work and having a paper on his solar power research published in the world’s leading condensed matter physics journal. Niraj was awarded a UK Student Volunteering Gold Award from the Office of External Affairs at the […]
Scholar scoops poetry prize
Gates Cambridge Scholar Kate Crowcroft has won the John Kinsella / Tracy Ryan Poetry Prize – the most prestigious poetry prize at Cambridge. Kate won joint first place for her poem ‘Poemtree’ which she read at a prize-giving event earlier this month. The Australian poet and writer John Kinsella spoke at the event about the […]
Judge team to advise on Togo’s development
A team of Cambridge alumni led by Sir Paul Judge will help to prepare a framework for the development of Togo over the next 10-20 years. Sir Paul, the key benefactor of the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, was asked by the President of Togo to develop Project Vision. It will identify […]
An anthropology of ourselves
Rachel Bolten is fascinated by the crossover between politics, literature and history. It is that fascination which will bring her to the University of Cambridge this autumn to study the British Mass Observation Study, an ongoing oral history archive started during World War II. It provides a “compelling analog” to Rachel’s undergraduate thesis on the […]
Positive role models
Women mentors have played a big role in Erin Kara’s career in the male-dominated world of astrophysics and she is determined eventually to return the favour. Erin [2011], whose PhD research at the University of Cambridge will centre on supermassive black holes, previously studied at Columbia’s all-female Barnard College and singles out one professor who […]
Ideas Lab – big ideas for the future
The first Gates Ideas Lab aimed at fleshing out the big ideas scholars hope to tackle in their research was hosted in the Scholars’ Room this week. The Ideas Lab, held on 11 June, featured presentations by current Scholars and Alumni, the GIL presented a diverse array of ideas from seven members of the community. Convened by […]
Nation building or state making?
A Gates Cambridge scholar has won the British Association for South Asian Studies Annual Prize 2012 for her paper on India’s attempts to integrate its isolated north-east frontier to the rest of the country. Bérénice Guyot-Réchard‘s paper, ‘Nation-buildling or state-making? India’s North-East Frontier and the ambiguities of Nehruvian developmentalism’, won the best paper and presentation by […]
