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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
The politics of conservation
How do environmental policies get made? What is the trade-off in fast developing countries like India between conservation and economic growth? What role does coalition politics have? Rohini Chaturvedi [2007] is looking at how a complex country like India makes policy so that she can understand better what the key factors are for promoting conservation. […]
Our risk society
Does studying literature at close quarters make it harder to create it? As both an award-winning poet and academic, Jaya Savige [2008] can answer this question better than most. Jaya is studying for a PhD in English, funded by a Gates Cambridge scholarship. He admits that it can be difficult to sustain any creative practice […]
Emotional history
Reflecting back on the past month and its association with St. Valentine’s Day, it seems February often confronts us with emotion a bit more overtly – even if it is only the retail version of romantic love. It has been hard to miss the flowers, the chocolates and the cards, the pink and red and […]
Is international law toothless?
How do states circumvent existing international law to create new norms and does this mean international law has little ability to restrain the most powerful states? For Gates Cambridge scholar Surabhi Ranganathan, whose PhD focuses on this issue, international law does have a positive impact. She says: “You can’t conceive of international law in the […]
The agile brain
Research which could improve our knowledge of how the human brain functions has been co-authored by a Gates scholar. Diego Bravo [2010] is co-author of an article in the December issue of the European Journal of Neuroscience. The article, Close temporal coupling of neuronal activity and tissueoxygen responses in rodent whisker barrel cortex, looks at […]
Alumna co-edits new edition of Gertrude Stein classic
The first book to confront the complex story of how a key work by Gertrude Stein was composed and revised has been co-edited by a Gates Cambridge alumna. Susannah Hollister [2001], currently ACLS New Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, is co-editor of Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas in Meditation: The Corrected Edition, published […]
US Gates Cambridge Scholars 2012 announced
Forty new US Gates Cambridge Scholars will take up their places in October at the University of Cambridge as the Scholarship programme continues to extend its reach to universities across the globe. Gates Cambridge Scholars have come from some 500 universities, with over 150 of these being in the US. The 2012 intake sees the […]
Should there be quotas for women in politics?
The first comparative, multi-country study of the impact of gender quotas in politics, co-edited by a Gates alumna, has been published this month.Jennifer Piscopo, Co-Chair of the Gates Scholars Alumni Association, co-authored The Impact of Gender Quotas, which is published by Oxford University Press.The book bridges literatures of gender quotas and women’s political representation and […]
Climate change heroes on film
A photographic project run by a Gates alumnus which aims to inspire the public about climate change activists has published two web documentaries. The two documentaries for the Climate Heroes project are about four men in Sumatra who used to work in the illegal logging industry and are now coffee farming. The documentary tells their […]
A legacy of learning
Eduardo Machicado Murillo’s archaeological research investigates the distant past, but his own family past, though less distant, has had a huge impact on his academic career and his motivation to give something back to the community in the form of a public library based on his family’s huge collection of books. His great grandfather was […]
