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.
Centre College
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has been awarded the most prestigious prize for students at the University of Cambridge’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Suyang Zhang, who is doing a PhD in […]
A UK and South African-based start-up founded by a Gates Cambridge Scholar has won Facebook’s top award for innovation in education in Africa. Hyperion Development, a social enterprise founded and […]
Four Gates Cambridge Scholars will give talks on research ranging from cholera transmission and the cell surface structure of bacteria to drug addition and racial politics in Venezuela at an […]
What is the process involved in losing consciousness in a natural way? In other words, what happens when you fall asleep every night? How can we be alert one minute […]
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has received this year’s $50,000 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year in Australia. Richard Payne [2002] was presented with the prize by the Australian […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]