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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
A new home for Gates Cambridge
The Gates Cambridge Trust is officially opening Bill Gates Sr. House, a multi-million-pound, state-of-the-art, sustainable building in central Cambridge, at an event today [3rd May] which includes an oral history film of the University of Cambridge’s prestigious scholarship programme. The building is a tribute to Bill Gates Sr.’s seminal role in establishing the Gates Cambridge […]
From digital accessibility to space flight
Pradipta Biswas was very short-sighted as a young child and that meant his ability to travel around or play outdoors was heavily restricted. That early experience, he says, “created a force in me to overcome barriers for myself and others so that physical impairments shouldn’t stop people from achieving their dreams”. It has driven his […]
21st century curator
Even while he was doing his PhD in art history, Julien Domercq was not only getting involved in the British art scene, he was curating one of the biggest art exhibitions of the day. Julien [2013] had taken up a two-year entry-level contract at the National Gallery a couple of years into his PhD on […]
Understanding migrant stories
Two Gates Cambridge Scholars are collaborating on a new research, story-telling and advocacy enterprise which aims to record journeys of migration, amplify the voices of migrants and build empathy for the growing number of people who are displaced or have to leave their country. Noor Shahzad, founder at Migration Collective, became interested in the stories […]
Gates Cambridge Class of 2024 announced
The Gates Cambridge Class of 2024 made up of 75 outstanding new scholars has been officially announced. The Gates Cambridge scholarship programme is the University of Cambridge’s flagship international postgraduate scholarship programme. It was established through a US$210 million donation to the University of Cambridge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. Since […]
Addressing the mental health emergency
Mental health has been rising up the global health priority list over the last few years, but Covid accelerated it. Yet the resources available to those in crisis situations are few. Gates Cambridge Scholar Usama Mirza is addressing one particular gap in his home country of Pakistan, having recently launched Asia’s first mental health ambulance […]
Food security in Africa through a multi-disciplinary lens
Three Gates Cambridge Scholars are collaborating on an innovative project to map and address the disappearance of historically undervalued African indigenous and traditional food crops at a time of climate crisis. The project is the brainchild of Dr Carol Ibe, founder of the JR Biotek Foundation, a charity which trains, upskills and empowers present and […]
Double winner
Jenna Armstrong has done it again. Last year she was part of the winning Cambridge women’s rowing team and her team did it again last weekend. Jenna [2020] started rowing in 2011 as an undergraduate, but took five years off from 2015 to 2020 until she picked it up again when she started at Cambridge. She […]
What does extreme weather mean for us?
Three Gates Cambridge Scholars from China, the US and India are taking part in the third episode of the Gates Cambridge podcast, So, now what? which is out today [26th March] as part of the Cambridge Festival’s Festival of Podcasts. The episode, featuring Victoria Herrmann [2015], Songqiao Yao [2014] and Ramit Debnath [2018] and hosted […]
Gates Cambridge seeks Interim Director
About us The Gates Cambridge mission is to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others. We achieve this mission by selecting outstanding scholars from countries outside the UK and providing them with full-cost scholarships to pursue postgraduate degrees in any subject available at the University of Cambridge. Gates […]
