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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
Mental health and well being in Asia
As a young student, Sabrina Anjara thought research was a bit detached from real life. She has since proven herself wrong. Her master’s thesis was the first empirical study of the quality of life of foreign domestic workers in Singapore and was used by advocates of foreign workers’ rights to campaign for changes to domestic […]
Deforestation starves fish
Research led by a Gates Cambridge Scholar shows forest debris that drains into lakes is an important contributor to freshwater food chains – bolstering fish diets to the extent that increased forest cover causes fish to get ‘fat’ and sparse forest leaves smaller, underfed fish. Debris from forests that washes into freshwater lakes supplements the […]
SimPrints to pilot in Bangladesh
Gates Cambridge Scholars are teaming up with a mobile health organisation in Bangladesh to pilot a fingerprint identification service which could have implications for global health, microfinance and fighting corruption. Cambridge students, including three Gates Cambridge Scholars, have developed the new technology called SimPrints with colleagues from the Royal Holloway. It is a Bluetooth-enabled fingerprint […]
Out of the margins of history
The history of the transportation of convicts between Mexico and the Philippines is little studied and throws up interesting and often messy details about the nature of colonisation in the 17th century which do not fit common conceptions. Stephanie Mawson came to that history as a result of travelling around Latin America as an undergraduate […]
Protecting forest communities
The vagueness of safeguards aimed at protecting the interests of forest communities may mean that they end up being marginalised from moves to conserve their environment, according to research by a Gates Cambridge Scholar. In an article published in the Journal of Forest Policy and Economics, Albert Arhin analyses the safeguards developed for implementing a new environmental […]
Start-up savvy
Two Gates Cambridge Scholars who have set up social enterprises in the health and education sectors and an Alumnus who advises technology start-ups will share their experiences at an event this week. The Experience Panel: Start-ups will be held on Tuesday. It aims to provide a forum for those interested or involved with starting up […]
Tara Cookson wins Bill Gates Senior Prize
Tara Cookson has been awarded the second Bill Gates Senior Prize in recognition of her outstanding research, her dedication to improving the lives of others and her work to promote the professional development of Gates Cambridge Scholars. The Bill Gates Sr. Prize was established by the Gates Cambridge Trustees in June 2012 in recognition of […]
Building on nature’s complex architecture
New techniques that contribute to humans’ ability to create complex synthetic matter have been developed by scientists at the University of Cambridge. Research on these new techniques, led by Derrick Roberts [2012] and based on his PhD research which focuses on ways to synthetically emulate the building blocks of life in order to engineer new […]
New ways of investing
A Gates Cambridge Scholar will receive the Academic Excellence Award from the Society for the Advancement for Socio-Economics for a paper on impact investing. Queen Nworisara-Quinn will present her paper entitled, The Emergence of Impact Investing: An In-Depth Study on the Construction of a New Market Category, at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago […]
Energy source
Ritankar Das has been researching alternative energy sources for over seven years. He is also writing a book on education, has set up an NGO and is on advisory boards of several major corporations. And he has the ear of the Government. Just last month, he attended a roundtable with several senior White House officials […]
