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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
Human rights defender
Torture, the death penalty and Guantanamo Bay were the themes of the Gates Cambridge Annual Lecture, given this week by the lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. Stafford Smith is director of Reprieve, a human rights organisation which provides free legal and investigative support to British, European and other nationals facing execution, and those who have faced […]
Why we need an education fit for the 21st century
Unschooling – allowing children to follow their own interests and learn at their own pace – may better equip them for the challenges of 21st century that traditional classroom teaching, a Gates Cambridge Scholar argues in a just published TEDx talk. Callie Vandewiele gave the TEDxCambridgeUniversity talk earlier this year based on her own experiences of […]
Biorefining: an industry for a new era?
Jonathan Hollander [2006] has spent his career trying to find practical ways of reducing our energy use. In doing so he has run the gamut of research, policy and practice since he left the University of Cambridge where he studied how to make light-emitting diodes more efficient. He is now working for a start-up company […]
A literary engineer
Ilana Walder-Biesanz [2013] has been torn between her early aptitude for maths and a love of literature and performance. Although she did her undergraduate degree in engineering, she took a dramatic departure for her masters to study European Literature and Culture. She was apprehensive about whether she would get funding to support such a change, having […]
The new apprentice
A Gates Cambridge alumnus has been chosen as an apprentice to the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Musa Chunge [2013] did an MPhil in Engineering at the University of Cambridge and is now working for Laing O’Rourke. The ICE President’s Apprentice Scheme, which is open to all technicians and ICE graduate members working […]
Creating emotionally intelligent machines
Gates Cambridge Scholar Andra Adams has won the Transforming Society category at the 2015 UK ICT Pioneers competition for her research on emotionally intelligent machines. The winners of the competition were announced at an exhibition and awards ceremony in London last night. The awards are a unique partnership between the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research […]
SimPrints gains backing for maternity project in Bangladesh
Cambridge start-up, SimPrints, has been awarded £250,000 after winning a highly competitive grant from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) for a project that will improve healthcare for over 22,000 expecting mothers and their newborns in Bangladesh slum neighbourhoods. Cambridge students, including three Gates Cambridge Scholars, and a colleague from the Royal Holloway, developed […]
Building sustainable pathways
How can we shift sustainable development from the periphery to the mainstream? Paulo Savaget’s PhD [2015], which he has just begun, will focus on sustainability transitions, analysing the interactions between policies, industrial strategies and contextual influences to assess how to foster science, technology and innovation capable of contributing to a more socially inclusive and environmentally […]
The politics of poverty reduction in Pakistan
Statistics on poverty in Pakistan need to be depoliticised so that they can be credible, according to a new report. The report, Progress under scrutiny: poverty reduction in Pakistan, says it is hard to trust official estimates on consumption-based poverty in Pakistan. Official estimates claim that poverty fell sharply between 1990 and 2010, but the […]
Society celebrates prominent black Cambridge students
A project which aims to celebrate the first black students at the University of Cambridge launches this month. The Black Cantabs Project is the brainchild of Gates Cambridge Scholar Njoki Wamai with Nnenda China from Downing College and alumna Siana Bangura from Peterhouse. Alumna Eva Namusoke from Cauis College has also joined the founding team […]
