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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
Scholar sets up innovative language society
A Gates scholar has set up a language service which offers the first classes in the UK in spoken Sanskrit. Gitte Marianne Hansen, who is doing a PhD in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, set up the Wolfson Language & Culture Society with three friends at the end of last year. She got the idea for […]
Gitte Marianne Hansen
Gitte Marianne Hansen is the first person in her family to go into higher education and says school friends would be surprised that she is now a Gates scholar studying Japanese culture at the University of Cambridge. “Whenever I go back to Denmark and run into someone from my early school years they are surprised […]
New US Gates Scholars announced
The Trust is delighted to announce that 30 new Gates Cambridge Scholars from the USA were selected after interview in New York on 4 and 5 February 2011. Full details about the new scholars are available from the New US scholars 2011 page
Emily Jordan
Despite both her parents being scientists, the last thing Emily Jordan [2009] thought she would be was a scientist. Like her sisters, a graphic designer and musician, she was quite arty as a child. At school Emily, who was born in Washington State and grew up in Iowa City and Chicago, loved literature, played the […]
Nuria Gonzalez-Rabade
Nuria Gonzalez Rabade has always been torn between her two passions – science and literature. Rather than opting for one or the other, however, she has managed to combine the two through her research on edible vaccines and her fiction writing. Nuria, who finished her Gates-funded PhD in Plant Sciences last April, has loved reading […]
Gates alumna co-authors brief on women in politics
The Gates Scholars Alumni Association chair has co-authored a policy brief on women’s empowerment in Latin America at the Global Institute for Gender Research. Jennifer Piscopo [2002]co-presented the brief, Presence without empowerment – women in politics in Latin America and the Caribbean, which was commissioned by the United Nations and the Social Sciences Research Council, […]
What does Twitter tell us about global happiness?
What can looking at tweets tell us about the happiness of the world? This and many other fascinating questions will be answered at this term’s Gates Scholars Internal Symposium. Alexander Davies [2010] will talk about viewing happiness in the world through the prism of Twitter. This is linked to his sentiment analysis work on tweets […]
Seminar to address how to have an ethical career
Four Gates alumni who have found ways to combine their work with their passion for “making a difference” will discuss how to find a socially conscious job at a virtual seminar next week. The seminar is the first in a series organised by the Gates Scholars Alumni Association. It takes place on 29th January at […]
Gates alumnus launches climate change photo project
A photo project promoting individuals who act as role models in the fight against climate change has been co-founded by a Gates alumnus. Climate Heroes was founded by two photographers, Stéphane Parnis and Gates alumnus Maxime Riché. It aims to highlight the work of outstanding individuals who can act as “inspirational models”. It seeks to: […]
Peter Brereton
Peter Brereton has long had a strong sense of service. From his early years in a Jesuit school to an undergraduate degree in the US Naval Academy and seven years in the US Navy as a submarine officer, national service has been very much at the centre of his life. Now he says that he […]
