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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
New Gates scholar to research working mothers
New Gates scholar Yen-Chun Chen is to research how the increase in women who work is affecting their role as mothers. Yen-Chun is studying for a PhD in sociology and has long been interested in family issues. For her masters, she has studied the impact of family support on married migrants in Taiwan. She became […]
Gates scholar leads research on antidepressants
The most common type of antidepressants, serotonin enhancers, alters peoples’ moral judgement and leads to a reduction in aggressive behaviour, says a study led by Gates scholar Molly Crockett. The new research is published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Crockett and her team from the University of Cambridge’s Behavioural and Clinical […]
Yen-Chun Chen
Yen-Chun Chen wanted to be a politician when she was a teenager. She started her academic career studying political science, but then realised that theory had nothing to do with practice and switched to social work. She now hopes that she can have more influence on shaping policy through her academic work or working in […]
New scholar in talks over award-winning educational material
New Gates scholar Matthew Tasker is in negotiations with Microsoft to create educational material for indigenous people in Ecuador. Australian Matthew, who will begin an MPhil in Environment, Society and Development at Cambridge this term, spent 18 months in Ecuador with his partner Linda Westberg and developed multimedia educational material for indigenous people there. It won a […]
Matthew Tasker
Talking about development is very different from actually doing it, says Matthew Tasker, so the Australian social anthropology student decided to find out for himself by heading for Ecuador. Eighteen months later and he and his partner had created an award-winning education programme for indigenous communities which Microsoft has now shown an interest in. Matthew, […]
Gates alumna makes national headlines
A Gates alumna has had articles published in the Huffington Post and several other national publications in the US in an effort to share her academic research with a broader audience. Dr Hilary Levey [2002] says there are important benefits to getting articles published in the mainstream media. In the last month alone she has […]
Gates scholar organises first African Innovation Prize
Two students from the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in Rwanda have won a new global entrepreneurship prize set up by a Gates scholar. Julia Fan Li and colleagues set up the African Innovation Prize following a six-week intensive research trip to Rwanda in 2009 which resulted in her and her colleagues writing a […]
Virtual Information Session for US applicants
The annual Gates Cambridge Scholarship webinars will start with the US-orient information session on 21 September 2010. The webinar will be at 1:00pm (Eastern Daylight Time) and will discuss international education at University of Cambridge through the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. It will include: • Experiences of undertaking a graduate degree at the University of Cambridge […]
Lucy Burgchardt
Lucy Burgchardt is passionate about archaeology and wants to convey that to as wide a public as possible. She says that many people associate archaeology with finding out what the elites did in the past, but excavating the everyday lives of past civilisations might make them more appealing to a wider audience. ”I enjoy looking […]
Cambridge ranked number one university in the world
The University of Cambridge has been named number one University in the world in the 2010 QS World University Rankings published today, the first non-US University ever to top the list. The University was voted the best for research quality, as selected by more than 15,000 academics around the world. Further details are available from: […]
