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
Investigating mobile elements in the mammalian genome
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has been awarded a prestigious fellowship at the University of Cambridge to carry out research into the role of mobile elements in the mammalian genome that can cause genetic diseases and cancer. Rebecca Berrens [2012] has been awarded the £300,000 Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship which provides her with four years of funding for independent research at Cambridge […]
Spider conservation
Michael Pashkevich didn’t like spiders when he was growing up, but at 11pm one night halfway into his undergraduate degree he found himself watching a golden orb weaver spider crawling up his arm. A researcher had asked him if he wanted to help with her research into spiders and had invited him on a nature […]
Award for feminist magazine
A feminist magazine co-edited by Gates Cambridge Scholar Marina Velickovic has won an award from the United Nations Population Fund in Bosnia and Hercegovina. The award from the UNFPA is bestowed on individuals and civil society organisations that oppose social stereotypes, eliminate prejudices against marginalised groups and, through various activities, make a significant contribution to the […]
Reading the Earth through its rocks
When she was a teenager, Marcela Gomez went to a book fair in Bogota with her father and sister. Her father, a chemistry professor, needed to buy some books for his class so took his daughters to the science section where Marcela found a book on stratigraphy, a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock layers and layering. […]
The future of UK foreign policy
A Gates Cambridge Scholar is taking part in an all-female panel discussion on the future of UK foreign policy at the Palace of Westminster tonight. Sharmila Parmanand is taking part in the Fabian International Policy Group event and responding to the inaugural Christmas Lecture given by former UN Deputy Secretary-General Lord Mark Malloch-Brown. Lord Malloch-Brown’s lecture will consider some of the big […]
Inoculating people against fake news
The events of 2016 have prompted a lot of reflection around the role of fake news in the votes in the UK and US, particularly attitudes to and manipulation of attitudes to immigration. Melisa Basol [2018] was just finishing her undergraduate degree in Psychology at the University of Aberystwyth at the time. There she had […]
Using ancient DNA to document past sea ice change
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has been awarded a 2.6m Euro grant to develop ancient DNA as a new tool for documenting past sea ice change. Stijn De Schepper will use the European Research Council Consolidator Grant to establish a cross-disciplinary research group of paleoceanographers and molecular ecologists. His project AGENSI – A Genetic View into Past Sea Ice Variability […]
A more diverse stand-up community
When Callie Vandewiele (2014) arrived in Cambridge she had been performing improv comedy in the US for four years. She couldn’t find an improv group in Cambridge so a friend suggested she try stand-up. Her first gig was in October 2013. Since then not only has she performed across the UK – from Norwich to […]
The politics of history
Architecture is imbued with history and destroying symbolic buildings or attempting to bring them back to life for political reasons cannot resolve past conflicts, according to Marcus Colla [2015]. His research focuses on Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, when the country was divided between the East and West. But he is also interested in […]
Four scholars named in list of US innovators and leaders
Four Gates Cambridge Scholars have been named in the Forbes 30 under 30 lists this year, highlighting up and coming leaders and innovators in a range of areas, from healthcare to science. Three of the Scholars were named in the healthcare list. Joshua Cohen [2012], who is currently an MD/PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins Medical School where he […]
