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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
Call to tackle huge rise in use of antimicrobials on animals
The amount of antimicrobials given to animals destined for human consumption is expected to rise by a staggering 52% and reach 200,000 tonnes by 2030 unless policies are implemented to limit their use, according to new research co-authored by a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Researchers, from ETH Zürich, Princeton, and the University of Cambridge, conducted the […]
From literature student to author
Amanda Dennis has grown up immersed in literature. After years of studying the subject and teaching courses in comparative literature, she has now written her first novel and is working on a second. Her first novel, The Trace, incorporates some of the research from her time at the University of Cambridge and her other studies […]
A celebration of ideas and debate
Two Gates Cambridge Scholars are taking part in this year’s Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Asiya Islam and Surabhi Ranganathan are speaking at the Festival, which celebrates the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. It runs from 16th to 29th October and has a programme of over 200 events, including talks, debates, exhibitions, film and theatre performances. […]
Inspiring underrepresented youth
A Gates Cambridge Scholar who worked in the Obama Administration has co-founded an organisation which aims to help young people from underrepresented groups to develop innovative career paths. Kevin Beckford and two colleagues from the Obama Administration, Jason Spear and Yasmin Salina have founded the Hustlers Guild. They came together through their shared experiences as […]
Culture detective
Anke Timmermann is a culture detective, discovering historical texts which connect past knowledge to the present. An independent antiquarian bookseller, she specialises in the history of science, scientific exploration and recipe books, subjects that represent a continuation of her academic studies on the history of alchemy and medicine. With alchemy linked in the popular imagination to […]
Murakami under the microscope
The award-winning Japanese writer Haruki Murakami was recognised as one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time in 2015, but his work has been criticised for its representation of women, with his fiction held up as a reflection of Japanese patriarchy. However a new project, led by Gates Cambridge Scholar Gitte Marianne Hansen, […]
A place of peace in the bustling city
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has won an honorable mention in an international architecture competition. Sofia Singler [2016] and her design partner Luka Pajovic won the mention in the competition organised by ArchMedium, a European architectural competition organisation for their proposal ‘Templum Sapientiae’. Sofia began collaborating with Luka, a 2017 architecture graduate from Cambridge, during the first […]
A foot in two worlds
Angela Gui [2017] has long been interested in ethical issues. As a child of Chinese parents living in Sweden she grew up fascinated by the difference between the ideologies behind the two countries. It is a fascination which has fuelled her academic research. But in 2015 that academic interest burst into her real life. During the […]
Breakthrough in artificial signalling
Scientists have developed a way to transmit molecular signals using artificial self-assembled molecular cages – which could eventually lead to the construction of complex chemical sensors and reactors with broad applications for industry and medicine. The research, ‘Signal transduction in a covalent post-assembly modification cascade’, was published in Nature Chemistry last week. Gates Cambridge Scholar […]
From the academic world to the Blue Planet
Alex Vail’s PhD was fuelled by a long-term passion for studying fish behaviour. Having grown up on the remote Lizard Island Research Station in Northern Australia, he spent his childhood surrounded by visiting marine biologists. Now a few years after finishing his PhD he continues to follow that passion, but this time through documentary-making. Alex […]
