Sangyeon (Fred) Cho

Dr. Sangyeon (Fred) Cho is a 2022 Fund for Medical Discovery (FMD) fundamental research fellow in Professor Seok Hyun (Andy) Yun's lab in the Wellman Center for photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS).

He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). During his undergraduate, he was fortunate to be exposed to exciting research areas in optics, such as holographic microscopy and time-resolved spectroscopy, under the guidance of Professor Yongkeun (Paul) Park in the Department of Physics and Professor Hyotcherl Ihee in the Department of Chemistry. With these two mentors, Dr. Cho realized the idea of a facile super-resolution microscopy technique inspired by flickering street lights.

He served the mandatory military service as a firefighter, which motivated him to pursue his graduate studies to contribute to human medicine. He completed his Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) from the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST) under the guidance of Professor Seok Hyun (Andy) Yun. With Professor Yun, Dr. Cho explores the exciting research about the 'nanolaser probe'.

His research interests are making a laser smaller than the optical diffraction limit, synthesizing a nanolaser using bottom-up chemistry like conventional quantum dots, and applying a developed nanolaser for multiplexed biomedical studies. Dr. Cho acknowledges several awards and fellowships, including the 2021 Wellman-Bullock Postdoctoral fellowship, Samsung Scholarship for graduate studies, The Best Mentor Award from the MGH-Wellman summer institute for bio-optics, Martha L. Gray Prize for Excellence in Research from HMS and MIT.
Beyond research life, he is a passionate runner who finished Los Angeles full marathon and half marathons by Boston Athletic Association.