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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
A cultural history of food
At the age of seven Madeline Weeks spent six months selling lemonade to raise $30 to buy an acre of rainforest. Raised by a family who spent summers camping, she felt a deep connection to the land even at a young age and a desire to protect it after listening to a school assembly on […]
Development vs profit
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has presented the initial findings of a programme he has developed which aims to help developing countries facing international trade litigation at an event at the Inter-American Development Bank. Todd Tucker gave his presentation at the “Development, FDI and Investment Treaties” forum on 8 April organised by the Embassy of Ecuador […]
Pre-history emerging from the ice
As climate change causes worldwide temperature rises, melting patches of ice and snow are beginning to yield artefacts that have lain frozen beneath the surface for thousands of years. These may hold the secret to how humans impacted and adapted to climate change in prehistoric times. Rachel Reckin is one of a growing number of […]
Harnessing the power of nature’s colour palette
Researchers are a step closer to being able to harness the properties of compounds which are responsible for many key functions in the natural world, such as the pigments that make photosynthesis possible, to create sensors which change colour according to pH changes. The results of scientific studies on the application of porphyrins led by […]
Gates Cambridge announces 55 new international scholars
Fifty-five of the world’s most academically brilliant and socially committed young people from 27 countries have been selected as Gates Cambridge Scholars and will begin their postgraduate courses at the University of Cambridge this October. They include the first Scholars from Afghanistan, Madagascar, Indonesia, Macedonia and Dominica. Competition for the Scholarships is fierce. The 55 […]
Nobel Laureate to speak at alumni event
Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt is to give a lecture at a Gates Cambridge Alumni event in Australia this week. Professor Schmidt, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011 “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae”, will speak at the event at Queensland University of […]
No clear evidence Vitamin D supplements reduce death from disease
A new large-scale research study co-led by a Gates Cambridge Alumnus shows that vitamin D supplementation, when administered alone, does not reduce mortality among older adults. However, when examined by type of supplementation, the researchers did find that vitamin D3 alone reduced mortality by 11 per cent. The scientists stress that additional research is needed. […]
Clean water is a human right
Arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh has poisoned millions of people. Shakked Halperin’s research will seek to find new sustainable, affordable ways to secure safe water supplies using synthetic biology. It will build on earlier work he has done on nano-materials in China and on his desire to combine his artistic and engineering knowledge in […]
New Director of Finance required
GATES CAMBRIDGE TRUST Director of Finance The Gates Cambridge Trust (Gates Cambridge) is Cambridge University’s most prestigious Overseas Scholarship Scheme. Founded in 2000 with a most generous benefaction from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Scheme provides full-cost scholarships to outstanding graduate students from across the world, and currently there are around 225 Gates […]
First academic study of Yoruba elite
A Gates Cambridge alumnus is to publish the first scholarly book on one of Africa’s most powerful and progressive elites, the Yoruba. Wale Adebanwi [2003], who did a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge supported by a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, is author of Yoruba elites and ethnic politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo […]
