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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
Gates Cambridge at the Festival of Ideas
A Gates Cambridge Alumna is speaking at a debate on censorship by omission at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas which starts this week. Ella McPherson [2004], who did her PhD in Sociology and is now a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Cambridge, will speak in the debate Hidden Voices: Censorship Through Omission on 21st October. […]
Paradigm shift in understanding abrupt past climate change
A new research study led by a Gates Cambridge Scholar backs up for the first time what had previously been a hypothesis about how and whether changes in ocean circulation are linked with abrupt climate events in the past and therefore how climate signals are spread globally. The observations from climate archives in the South Atlantic demonstrate what climate […]
The fabric of life
Callie Vandewiele [2014] was unschooled until she was 16. She is now doing a PhD in Latin American Studies focused on traditional Guatemalan textiles at the University of Cambridge. Callie says her unconventional education was due to her mother, who had been an MBA and a teacher before she had her own children. “She thought […]
Study shows sex bias in how chimps prepare for tool use
New research shows a difference between the sexes in immature chimpanzees when it comes to preparing for adulthood by practising object manipulation – considered ‘preparation’ for tool use in later life. Researchers studying the difference in tool use between our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, found that immature bonobos have low rates of object […]
Doctors liken keeping patients alive unnecessarily to torture
Trainee doctors think they are being asked to prolong some patients’ lives unnecessarily and describe such cases as being tantamount to torture and abuse, according to a new study. The research, led by Elizabeth Dzeng, a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, is the first to focus on US doctors’ moral distress surrounding […]
Clive Stafford Smith to give Annual Lecture
The distinguished human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, whose campaigning work has resulted in the release of 69 Guantánamo prisoners, including Shaker Aamer, will deliver this year’s Annual Gates Cambridge Lecture. Clive Stafford Smith’s lecture, “Death penalty, drones and torture”, will take place on the evening of 11 November. He is the founder and Director […]
Understanding maths anxiety
What makes some people less likely to do well at maths than others? Why are women more likely to avoid STEM subjects than men? Chiara Avancini’s research aims to find out the source of maths anxiety and to test if there are ways to reduce it and boost people’s maths performance. Chiara [2014] says the […]
Riding through the Rockies
A Gates Cambridge Scholar spent the summer cycling 2,900 miles across the Rocky Mountains towards Mexico along the longest off-pavement bike route in the world. Libby Blanchard [2012] rode from Banff in Canada (257 miles north of the American border) to the US-Mexico border. She took the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, a transnational mountain bike route […]
Understanding the complexity of dengue fever
An international consortium of laboratories worldwide that are studying the differences among dengue viruses has shown that while the long-held view that there are four genetically-distinct types of the virus holds, far more important are the differences in their antigenic properties – the ‘coats’ that the viruses wear that help our immune systems identify them. […]
Creating refugee camp entrepreneurs
Policymakers should foster entrepreneurship at refugee camps to help fill an “institutional void” that leads to despair, boredom and crime, according to a new paper co-authored by a Gates Cambridge Scholar. “Refugee camp entrepreneurs reduce aid dependency and in so doing help to give life meaning for, and confer dignity on, the entrepreneurs,” says the […]
