Raphaella So, Ph.D.
Croucher Postdoctoral Fellow, 2026-2028
Raphaella So, Ph.D. (Raphie) received her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Toronto, Canada under the supervision of Dr. Joel Watts. She is currently generously funded by the Croucher Foundation in Hong Kong for a postdoctoral fellowship in Joel Watts’s lab to build upon her PhD work. Her research project involves designing efficient biochemical techniques for classifying Parkinson’s disease subtypes, as well as mapping the relationship between the shape of α-synuclein protein aggregates and their disease outcomes in physiologically relevant mouse models.
Raphie actively serves the Toronto community by organizing fundraising galas every Chinese New Year for Yee Hong’s senior homes, and greeting patrons at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre’s annual film festival. If you don’t catch Raphie volunteering, you will find her dancing – she also organizes her own Kpop dance group called BTE, or “Bonding Through Exhaustion.”
As an avid fan of Japanese and Korean music and culture, Raphie has learned to speak Japanese and Korean in addition to her own native fluency in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin Chinese. She enjoys being literate in primary sources, puns, and memes; as well as conversing with artists and fans around the world in their native languages.
