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.
Centre College
A Gates Cambridge alumna has been selected for a prestigious five-year, $1.25 million grant to investigate a meningitis vaccine in Mali. Nicole Basta is one of the first 10 recipients […]
Named one of the top 50 leaders in science, technology and business by Scientific American, Professor Young’s lecture, Genetics, Epigenetics and Future Medicine, took place on 19th October 2011 at […]
Gavin was previously head of DFID’s Global Funds & Development Finance Institutions Department and International Financial Institutions Department. Prior to joining DFID in 2000, McGillivray managed long-term agricultural development programmes […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]