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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
Double success for Gates Cambridge couple
A Gates Cambridge couple have been doubly successful and have both won the competitive Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) in Australia. Husband and wife Douglas Brumley [2009] and Natalia Egorova [2010] were both successful in this year’s round of Australian Research Council Grants. The success rate for the competitive Discovery Early Career Researcher Award […]
Scholar leads review of self-assembled molecules research
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has led a review of the growing research on self-assembled molecules and “post-assembly” chemical reactions. The review, led by Dr Derrick Roberts, was commissioned by the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Chem. Soc. Rev. and recognises the expertise of Dr Roberts and his University of Cambridge co-authors, Professor Jonathan Nitschke and […]
Rising Tides bring innovation prize
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has won a prestigious US social entrepreneurship prize for a research project on US towns and cities at risk of partial submersion due to climate change. Victoria Herrmann’s was one of 10 projects to scoop the JM Kaplan Fund Innovation Prize. Her winning Rising Tides project will create a new online matchmaking […]
Supporting innovation and business ideas in Africa
During her time at Cambridge, Queen Nworisara Quinn co-founded the Cambridge Africa Business Network, a yearly conference focused on Africa which brought academics and practitioners together as well as politicians such as Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president of Nigeria. It was a huge achievement and one that exemplifies her commitment to creating spaces where different […]
The politics of whiteness in Africa
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has co-edited the first comparative study on white privilege, power and subjectivities in post-colonial Africa in an academic journal. Danelle van Zyl-Hermann [2010] is currenty a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Along with Jacob Boersema from Columbia University, she has edited a special issue on ‘The politics […]
Speeding up the spread of information
Technology is evolving fast and it is only fairly recently that rapidly increasing speeds in communication networks have allowed the field of distributed computing to flourish. Distributed computing allows the resources of a large number of computers in a network to work together to tackle computational problems that would otherwise be impossible to solve. Examples include the the bitcoin network […]
Preventing a genetic uprising in early life
Molecules called endosiRNAs help us avoid genetic chaos, according to a new study from the Babraham Institute, led by a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Much of the human genome contains pieces of DNA called transposons, a form of genetic parasite. When active, transposons can damage genes so it is important to keep them inactive. Early in […]
Monitoring bridge infrastructure
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has spoken at a major UK meeting of bridge owners on one of the main causes of bridge erosion. Kasun Kariyawasam spoke at the UK Bridge Owners Forum, a triannual meeting of major bridge owning organisations in the UK such as Network Rail, Highways England, London Underground and the transport authorities […]
Scholars to speak at Internal Symposium
Four Gates Cambridge Scholars are presenting their research at an Internal Symposium on 1st November on subjects ranging from the mental health of women in the slums of Mumbai and memory formation to migration between Japan and Mexico and the ethics of cancer screening. Saloni Atal’s talk is entitled Suffering, Survival & Transformation: Lay Understandings […]
A tale of the messenger’s tail
DNA contains information needed to make proteins – the basic building block of a cell. The information in the DNA is first transcribed into an intermediate messenger RNA (mRNA), which is then used as the template to make proteins. In a nutshell, this is the central dogma of molecular biology. Our cells consist of numerous […]
