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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
The history of food
How do eating habits change through history? Why do we eat what we eat? And what is the impact when a community’s traditional food stocks collapse? Emelyn Rude [2018] is fascinated by the history of food. Her PhD, which she begins in the autumn, will focus on how past fish stock collapses have impacted national […]
A day of engagement
Sixty Gates Cambridge Scholars took part in this year’s Day of Engagement in early March. Joined by five guests, they worked with six local and two international charities on 11 different projects. The charities involved included Bounce! which works with disadvantaged children, Romsey Mill which creates opportunities for change with young people, children and families […]
Scholar wins Chemistry prize at British Parliament
Gates Cambridge Scholar Michelle Teplensky won a Silver Award at the STEM for BRITAIN event at the UK Parliament on Monday. STEM for BRITAIN aims to encourage, support and promote Britain’s early-stage and early-career research scientists, engineers, technologists and mathematicians. It gives scientists the chance to go to Parliament and be in the company of MPs, policymakers and key figures […]
Changing the face of poverty through gender equality
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has identified the main barriers to equality for women and is working to tackle these in a bid to change the face of poverty. Giving this year’s Gates Cambridge Annual Lecture, Sarah Hendriks, Director of Gender Equality at the Foundation, said the Foundation had spent the last year sifting […]
The race to be first with a new MRI scan
It’s not every PhD researcher who becomes involved in a race to be the first in Europe to use a new technique which could have a major impact on healthcare, but Surrin Deen’s work on hyperpolarized MRI – a new, more detailed MRI scan – provided just that experience. Hyperpolarized MRI can increase scientists’ ability to detect […]
What does it mean to be educated?
Education should be about getting access to different ideas and perspectives that challenge received views, but too often it is about similarly wealthy people with like-minded ideas getting together to decide how the world is, according to author and Gates Cambridge Scholar Tara Westover. Tara [2009] was speaking at the launch of her memoir Educated which […]
Testing prison officers’ professionalism
How resilient is professionalism in key institutions like the police, army and prison service in the face of authoritarian rule? It’s an issue that is very relevant today and Katherine Bruce-Lockhart is believes history can shed some light on the subject. Her PhD research approaches it from the perspective of prison officers in Uganda in the […]
From white matter to British-Sino policy
Three Gates Cambridge Scholars will speak about their research on issues ranging from the role of white matter in the brain, the formation of British-Sino policy and new ways of analysing brain activity at an internal symposium this week. The symposium takes place on Thursday. The speakers are: Jennifer Jia’s talk is entitled The Role of Neural […]
Investigating the underbelly of family life
Matt Cassels has had a long-standing interest in adolescent self-harm since his high school days when he knew several people who had injured themselves. “They were not the people I thought were at risk or that adults were worried about,” he says. “They were high achieving, affluent teenagers. I wondered what was going on. I […]
Questions of identity
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has published a new book this week on what she sees as a central conflict of modernity: the desire to be both normal and special at the same time. Marie Kolkenbrock’s book Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzler’s Prose: Five Psycho-Sociological Readings is published by Bloomsbury, 2018. The book is based […]
