close menu
••• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum.Close Alert
Peter So

More About Peter

Contact Info

room NE47-279

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

77 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Download CV
Associated Research Areas
Administrative Contact Gaines III, John Mason NE47-322 617.253.6236

Professor So News + Media

Researchers hope to make needle pricks for diabetics a thing of the past

Researchers hope to make needle pricks for diabetics a thing of the past

New research from Professor Peter So suggests that noninvasive spectroscopy could be used to monitor blood glucose levels instead of needle pricks.

READ MORE
Mirrored chip could enable handheld dark-field microscopes

Mirrored chip could enable handheld dark-field microscopes

MIT engineers including Associate Professor Mathias Kolle and Professor Peter So have developed a simple chip powered by quantum dots that allows standard microscopes to visualize difficult-to-image biological organisms.

READ MORE
Needles that hit the right mark

Needles that hit the right mark

Peter So’s Laser Biomedical Research Center teams with researcher from Massachusetts General Hospital to improve the accuracy of epidural needle placement.

READ MORE

Faculty Details

Education

  • 1986

    HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

    B.Sc.

  • 1992

    PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

    Ph.D.

Research Interests

  • Optics
  • Microscopy
  • Spectroscopy
  • Bioengineering
  • Biophysics

Honors + Awards

  • 1999-2002    Ester and Harold E. Edgerton Chair, MIT
  • 2003    3M Innovation Award
  • 2003    Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching
  • 2004    Frank E. Perkins Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising, MIT
  • 2006-2010    Bio-Area Head, Mechanical Engineering Department, MIT
  • 2008-Present    Computation System Biology Program, Singapore-MIT Alliance 2, Chair
  • 2010-2012    BIOSYM, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Science and Technology Center, Associate Chair
  • 2010-2012    Singapore Research Professor of Bioinstrumentation and Bioimaging
  • 2010-2013    Biophysical Society, Council Member
  • 2022              AIMBE Fellow

Related Experience

  • 1992-1996     Postdoctoral Associate, Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics, UIUC
  • 1996-2000    Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT.
  • 2000-2005    Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Division of Biological     Engineering, MIT
  • 2000-Present    Associate Director, Whitehead-MIT Bioimaging Center
  • 2005-Present     Professor, Department of Mechanical and Biological Engineering, MIT
  • 2009-2010     Chief Executive Officer, FemtoFab, Inc.
  • 2010-Present    Chief Technology Consultant, FemtoFab, Inc.
  • 2011-Present        Director, Laser Medical Research Center, a NIH NIBIB Research Resource.

Memberships

  • SPIE- International Society for Optics and Photonics

Professional Service

  • a. Review Panel Member:
  • 1997-1999    NSF Advisory Panel, Major Research Instrumentation Programs
  • 1999-Present    NIH Member, Shared Instrument Program
  • 2008-Present    NIH Standing Member, Microscopic Imaging Study Section
  •  
  • b. Editorial Board:
  • 1998    Guest Editor, Optics Express, Special Issue on Microscopy Techniques
  • 2002-Present    Editorial Board Member: Journal of Fluorescence
  • 2008-Present    Editorial Board Member: Journal of Biophysics
  • 2014-Present    Editorial Board Member: Nature Scientific Reports
  •  
  • c. Conference/Symposium Chair and Instructor:
  • 1990-Present    SPIE BIOS, “Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences,” Program co-Chair
  • 2005-Present    Workshop on Advanced FLIM Techniques (St. Ingbert, Germany), Instructor
  • 2008    Gordon Research Conference, “Laser in Medicine and Biology,” Chair
  • 2000-Present       SPIE ECBO, “Optical Microscopy,” Program co-Chair

MIT Service

  • 1996-2000    Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT.
  • 2000-2005    Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Division of Biological     Engineering, MIT
  • 2000-Present    Associate Director, Whitehead-MIT Bioimaging Center
  • 2005-Present     Professor, Department of Mechanical and Biological Engineering, MIT

Teaching

  • 2.671
  • 20.309
  • 2.715

Publications

  • 1.    Lee, W. C., Huang, H., Feng, G., Sanes, J. R., Brown, E. N., So, P. T. C., Nedivi, E., “Dynamic remodeling of dendritic arbors in GABAergic interneurons of adult visual cortex,” PLoS Biol., 4, e29 (2006). PMID: 16366735
  • 2.    Kim, K. H., Buehler, C., Bahlmann, K., Ragan, T. Lee, W. C. A., Nedivi, E., Heffer, E.L., Fantini, S., So, P. T. C., “Multifocal multiphoton microscopy based on multianode photomultiplier tubes,” Optics Express, 15, 11658-11678 (2007). PMID: 19547526, PMCID: PMC3060709
  • 3.    Lee, W. A., Chen, J. L., Huang, H., Leslie, J.H., Amitai, Y., So, P. T. C., Nedivi, E., "A Dynamic Zone Defines Interneuron Remodeling in the Adult Neocortex," PNAS, 105, 19968-73 (2008). PMID: 19066223, PMCID: PMC2604980
  • 4.    J. L. Chen, W. C. Lin, J. W. Cha, P. T. So, Y. Kubota and E. Nedivi, "Structural basis for the role of inhibition in facilitating adult brain plasticity," Nat Neurosci 14(5), 587-594 (2011).
  • 5.    Chen, J. L., Villa, K. L., Cha, J. W., So, P. T. C., Kubota, Y., Nedivi, E., “Clustered Dynamics of Inhibitory Synapses and Dendritic Spines in the Adult Neocortex,” Neuron, 74(2) 361-373 (2012). PMID: 21478885, PMCID: PMC3083474
  • 6.    Choi, Y., Hillman, T. R., Choi, W., Lue, N., Dasari, R. R., So, P. T. C., Choi, W., Yaqoob, Z., “Measurement of the Time-Resolved Reflection Matrix for Enhancing Light Energy Delivery into a Scattering Medium,” Phys. Rev. Lett., 111, 24, 243901 (2013). PMID: 24483661, PMCID: PMC4092257
  • 7.    So, P. T. C., Yew, E. Y. S., Rowlands, C. J., “High Throughput Nonlinear Optical Microscopy,” Biophysical Journal, 105, 12, 2641-2654 (2013). PMID: 24359736, PMCID: PMC3882500
  • 8.    Rowlands, C. J., So, P. T. C., “On the correction of errors in some multiple particle tracking experiments,” App. Phys. Lett., 102, 2, 021913 (2013). PMID: 23405035, PMCID: PMC3562246
  • 9.    Rowlands, C. J., Yew, E. Y. S., So, P. T. C., “Parallel super-resolution imaging,” Nat. Method, 10, 8, 709-710 (2013). PMID: 23900251, PMCID: PMC4280568
  • 10.    Yew, E. Y. S., Sheppard, C. J. R., So, P. T. C., “Temporally focused wide-field two-photon microscopy: Paraxial to vectorial,” Opt. Exp., 21, 10, 12951-12963 (2013). PMID: 23736515, PMCID: PMC3686358
  • 11.    Cha,J.W., Singh, V.R., Kim, K.K., Subramanian, J., Peng, Q., Yu, H., Nedivi, E., So, P.T.C., "Reassignment of Scattered Emission Photons in Multifocal Multiphoton Microscopy," Sci. Rep., 4, 5153 (2014). PMID: 24898470, PMCID: PMC4046171
  • 12.    Stanciu, S.G., Xu, S., Peng, Q., Yan, J., Stanciu, G.A., Welsch, R.E., So, P.T.C., Csucs, G., Yu, H., "Experimenting liver fibrosis diagnostic by two photon excitation microscopy and Bag-of-Features image classification," Sci. Rep., 4:4636 (2014). PMID: 24717650, PMCID: PMC3982167
  • 13.    Sukup-Jackson, M. R., Kiraly, O., Kay, J. E., Na, L., Rowland, E. A., Winther, K. E., Chow, D. N., Kimoto, T., Matsuguchi, T., Jonnalagadda, V. S., Maklakova, V. I., Singh, V. R., Wadduwage, D. N., Rajapakse, J., So, P. T. C., Collier, L. S., Engelward, B. P., “Rosa26-GFP Direct Repeat (RaDR-GFP) Mice Reveal Tissue- and Age-Dependence of Homologous Recombination in Mammals in vivo,” PLOS Genetics, 10, 6, e1004299. PMID: 24901438, PMCID: PMC4046920
  • 14.    Sung, Y., Lue, N., Hamza, B., Martel, J., Irimia, D., Dasari, R.R., Choi, W., Yaqoob, Z., So, P.T.C., “Three-Dimensional Holographic Refractive-Index Measurement of Continuously Flowing Cells in a Microfluidic Channel,” Phys. Rev. Applied 1, 014002 (2014). PMID: 25419536, PMCID: PMC4236915
  • 15.    Xu, S., Wang, Y., Tai, D. C., Wang, S., Cheng, C.L., Peng, Q., Yan, J., Chen, Y., Sun, J., Liang, X., Zhu, Y., Rajapakse, J. C., Welsch, R. E., So, P. T., Wee, A., Hou, J., Yu, H., “qFibrosis: A fully-quantitative innovative method incorporating histological features to facilitate accurate fibrosis scoring in animal model and chronic hepatitis B patients,” J. Hepatol, S0168-8278(14)00121-4 (2014). PMID: 24583249, PMCID: PMC4278959