News
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
- Share
Latest News
Inclusive education
How do potentially marginalised students find friendship, support and a sense of belonging at university? Andrés Castro Samayoa [2011] is studying a semi-secret society that existed at the University of Cambridge in the early 20th century for his MPhil on multidisciplinary gender studies. He hopes his findings will provide information which will prove useful to […]
In their own words
Is your online password safe? Find out why passwords are likely to stay with us for decades to come even though most can be easily guess and the majority of us have forgotten about half the passwords we’ve ever registered. A Gates Scholars Council internal symposium on 2nd May will hear from Joseph Bonneau [2008] […]
Polar education
How will people adapt to climate change in the next century? The answers may be visible today in the Arctic region where indigenous people are already dealing with melting sea ice and changes to their way of life. Mia Bennett, whose interest up to now has been on how climate change is affecting the infrastructure […]
Olusegun Obasanjo to speak at new African development conference
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the twice-former president of Nigeria and one of Africa’s most well-known elder statesmen, is to give the opening keynote address at the first conference of a new network which aims to bring together students, entrepreneurs and business people who are passionate about business in Africa. The Cambridge Africa Business Network conference, which […]
Synthetic DNA
Researchers have created the first synthetic molecules that, alongside the natural molecules DNA and RNA, are capable of storing and replicating genetic information. Gates Cambridge alumnus Vitor Pinheiro and colleagues from Philipp Holliger’s PNAC Division at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge used sophisticated protein engineering techniques to adapt enzymes, that in nature […]
Future connections
A Gates alumnus is one of a number of researchers involved in the largest India-UK ICT research collaboration into the communications of the future. The nine-university consortium includes the University of Cambridge and Cambridge-based Toshiba Research Laboratories Europe. It has just been awarded £10m funding from the UK Government, involves 200 scientists in the UK and […]
Language recovery
Brielle Stark’s uncle suffered a bad stroke in her first year at university. Indeed he still has no movement on his right hand side. “I observed that and saw the effect that his road to recovery had on my family,” she says. “It had a big impact on me.” Such a big impact that it […]
TB under the microscope
The chief medical officer of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline will give the keynote address at a conference dedicated to finding new ways to tackle diseases which disproportionately affect developing countries. The Cambridge Global Health Commercialization & Funding Roundtable has been organised by three Gates Cambridge scholars and two other students and takes place this Thursday and […]
The evolution of Alzheimer’s
Researchers have discovered the existence of a shared pathway through which multiple genes and their byproducts affect people’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease. The research could be an important focus for future gene discovery and the development of targeted therapies to fight against Alzheimer’s. It has been published in the latest edition of The American […]
