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
First batch of the class of 2019 announced
Thirty-four of the most academically outstanding and socially committed US citizens have been selected to be part of the 2019 class of Gates Cambridge Scholars at the University of Cambridge. The US Scholars-elect, who will take up their awards this October, are from 37 universities including seven institutions that have for the first time produced […]
Creating centres of excellence
Maria Pawlowska has spent the last three years setting up a network of research excellence centres in Poland as coordinator of the International Research Agendas (IRAP) programme at the Foundation for Polish Science. The aim of the programme is to attract the most talented researchers from around the world to Poland in order not only to boost […]
A personal commitment to grassroots activism
Carlos Adolfo Gonzalez Sierra has recently accepted a new job as Associate Director of ACLAMO Family Centres, a non-profit organisation which provides educational programmes and access to social and health services to Latino and other low-income families in Pennsylvania. He sees his own story reflected in many of the residents he now serves and works with. “I see […]
Scholar publishes bestselling cybercrime thriller
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has published a bestselling book on cybercrime in Poland. Jakub Szamalek’s new book, Cokolwiek Wybierzesz [Whatever you choose], was published in January and is already on the bestseller list in Poland. It is thought to be the first book to seriously tackle the issues of cybercrime in Poland and has provoked […]
An interview with Yeo Bee Yin
Yeo Bee Yin [2009] did her master’s in chemical engineering as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She is now Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change in Malaysia where she has helped to set up a nationwide ban on the import of plastic waste and published a 12-year roadmap that includes a legal framework on eliminating the use of single […]
From foster care and astronomy to cowboying
Three Gates Cambridge Scholars will tell personal stories ranging from a year spent at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, cowboying and life in foster care at an event on Wednesday. The Scholar Stories session will hear from Rebecca Charbonneau, Erik Rudicky and Rob Henderson. Rebecca’s talk, Where the Wired Things Are: Life Amongst the Radio Telescopes in the Mountain, […]
Irina Bokova to deliver Gates Cambridge Annual Lecture
This year’s Gates Cambridge Annual Lecture will be given next month by Irina Bokova, the first female Director-General of UNESCO on the subject of protecting our cultural heritage. The Annual Lecture will take place on the evening of 27th February at St John’s College, Cambridge. Irina Bokova will speak about UNESCO’s work on cultural heritage which is […]
Alternative put forward for Planet Nine hypothesis
The strange orbits of some objects in the farthest reaches of our solar system, hypothesised by some astronomers to be shaped by an unknown ninth planet, can instead be explained by the combined gravitational force of small objects orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune, say researchers. The alternative explanation to the so-called ‘Planet Nine’ hypothesis, put […]
Sight saving from a grassroots to a global level
When Tom Johnson was a medical student, he built a community organisation that provides free vision screenings and guaranteed follow-up medical and surgical care to people with little or no resources. That organisation, the Student Sight Savers Programme, has served hundreds of people over the past six years. Tom’s contribution was recently recognised when he […]
Taking on the World Marathon Challenge
Greg Nance [2011] did his first ultra marathon on the Jurassic coast in December 2011 while he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge. He has always been very athletic. Since he was a boy he has been doing open water swimming and has swum in a large variety of settings, from the […]
