- Scholarship in 2018 at University of Toronto
Raphaella So received her BSc in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She is now pursuing her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, studying Parkinson's disease in Dr. Joel Watts's prion laboratory.
Raphaella is actively involved with a national volunteer organization, Let's Talk Science, through which she organizes fun and educational wet labs for middle and high school classes to develop their interest in biology and chemistry.
Outside of lab and volunteering, Raphaella loves to read, sing, dance, and seek out delicious food in the city.
Currently
Raphaella's research projects at the Watts Lab revolve around characterizing alpha-synuclein protein aggregates, which are common pathological hallmarks among Parkinson's and some rarer neurodegenerative diseases. She is investigating how distinct conformations (or "strains") of such aggregates can lead to different disease phenotypes in mice, which will inform future disease modeling and shed light on the development of strain-based therapeutics.