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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
Scientists launch e-commerce site
Students from the University of Cambridge have set up the world’s largest e-commerce platform for single stranded DNA which they believe have enormous potential for contributing to therapeutic treatments. Gates Cambridge Scholar Bo Shiun Lai [2013] and his labmate Yang Zhang set up AptaCam, the world’s largest oligonucleotide eCommerce platform, last year. The company was […]
Training Africa’s scientists
African governments and international NGOs need to invest more in research and development to enable African scientists to come up with solutions to poverty and food insecurity, says Carol Ibe. The Scholar Elect is not only starting a PhD in Plant Science at Cambridge in the autumn, but will do her research at the same […]
Understanding a culture through its food
The first book to tell the cultural and agricultural history of the Afghan and Tajik Pamirs has been published. The book, With Our Own Hands, was put together by Gates Cambridge Alumna Jamila Haider and Frederik van Oudenhoven. Through the lens of local recipes, stories, poems and essays, it describes Pamiri food and its origins, […]
GSS returns to Cambridge
The eighth Global Scholars Symposium will bring a number of distinguished speakers – including renowned Canadian HIV advocate Stephen Lewis, Indian social activist Medha Patkar, and award-winning UK comedian Francesca Martinez – to the Cambridge Union this May for three days of dialogue about the world’s most pressing challenges. Stephen Lewis was named by TIME […]
Complex identities in history
Anisha Bhat is interested in questions of identity and in showing that identity for many people is often complex and multilayered. Having been born in India and growing up in the US, she has her own personal reasons for that interest and this has fuelled her academic fascination with identity and in particular the interconnections […]
Sustainable development in the Arctic region
The Arctic requires a development structure capable of promoting a diversified local economy, while simultaneously empowering communities to be climate resilient, according to a report published by a Gates Cambridge Scholar for an Artic Council meeting next week. Victoria Herrmann’s report, Arctic Melt – Turning Resource Extraction Into Human Development, points out that while the […]
Four Scholars tell their stories
Four Gates Cambridge Scholars will share personal experiences of political extremism, poverty and vision loss as well as working with an NGO focusing on educating girls in India at an event next week. The Scholars Stories session takes place on Tuesday 21st April at 7pm. The Scholars taking part are: – Hanna Ajer [2014], who […]
Opening technology up to all
Researchers led by a Gates Cambridge Scholar have devised a computer control interface which will help people with physical impairments and others who cannot use a mouse or touchscreeen to perform complex computing tasks at speed. The team of researchers at the Department of Engineering, led by Dr Pradipta Biswas, has developed a computer control […]
The political roots of the Ebola outbreak
The Ebola outbreak in Guinea has been treated as a public health crisis, but it has more to do with the failure of the central government to address local and regional concerns promptly and objectively, according to a new paper by a Gates Cambridge Alumna. In an article entitled Forest Guinea, Instability Factors and Ebola […]
From Cambridge to the NZ Government
Chris Tooley may have done his PhD on establishing an ethics of self-determination, but his interest is far from just academic. Not only has he gone on to put theory into practice, but he has done so at the highest level, as Chief Advisor to Minister of Maori Affairs in the New Zealand Parliament. He […]
