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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
Scholars tell their stories
Three Gates Cambridge Scholars will speak about a range of personal experiences which have had a transformative impact on their lives, from having their research used in the US Presidential elections to working with remote tribes in the Peruvian Amazon and setting up a new religious organisation. Scholar Stories takes place on 19th October. The […]
How the brain’s motor system works in old age
How does the brain’s motor system compensate for the decline in our ability to sense the world around us as we get older? According to new research led by a Gates Cambridge Scholar Noham Wolpe, it does so by relying more strongly on prediction from prior experience. The study on which Wolpe is lead author, is […]
Whatsapp for health
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has created an app which can be used by healthworkers in remote areas of the Peruvian Amazon to gather vital information and increase reporting of health problems. Sam Sudar [2009] started working with the health research project Mamás del Río when he was living in Lima in the last half of […]
Changing the world through education
Ria Collingwood-Boafo has been an activist from an early age, but she knew that to make a lasting impact she needed to be able to have a seat at the policy table. Not only is she now working in the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago where she has taken a lead role in […]
Climate change: past, present and future
Two Gates Cambridge scholars will be speaking at a debate on climate change at this year’s Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Rachel Reckin [2014] and Victoria Herrmann [2014] are speaking at the event Climate Change: Past, Present and Future on 22nd October. The session aims to explore how the Earth’s climate has changed throughout history, what […]
From opera to social politics
Parvathi Subbiah’s academic career has taken some dramatic changes along the way, from engineering to music – she sang opera with the world famous Simon Bolivar Orchestra – to Latin American Studies. This autumn she begins a PhD in Latin American Studies focusing on racism in Venezuela. “I want to try to understand why there […]
Reducing species loss through collaboration
Animal behaviour experts and wildlife conservationists have come together to identify the 50 key questions on which they can collaborate to reduce species loss. Experts from the two disciplines came together in a unique workshop described in a paper published today in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Previous studies have shown that animal […]
Keeping an eye on the road
A new book which explores the prospect of people being able to control the electronic displays and interfaces in a car through eye gaze technology has just been published. The book, Exploring the Use of Eye Gaze Controlled Interfaces in Automotive Environments, is written by Gates Cambridge Scholar Pradipta Biswas [2006], who did a PhD […]
Out of Africa and into Eurasia
A new study in Nature analyses genomic diversity in 125 human populations at an unprecedented level of detail, tackling questions related to our species’ demographic history and genetic adaptations, and suggesting that two successful dispersals out of Africa have left descendants in the modern world. The study, co-authored by Gates Cambridge Scholar Evelyn Jagoda, is […]
In search of a curative therapy for a viral epidemic
Gates Cambridge scholar Victor Roy is calling for a bold response to Hepatitis C while investigating the financial dynamics of pharmaceutical innovation that can lead to restrictions in treatment access. Victor (2013), a PhD candidate in Sociology, has traced the development of new curative therapies for Hepatitis C and how health systems can scale-up treatment […]
