Dr Emily So is a chartered civil engineer and a Lecturer at the Department of Architecture.  Before coming to Cambridge she worked at Arup as a senior geotechnical engineer and has most recently finished a two year appointment at the U.S. Geological Survey as a Mendenhall Fellow.  Her area of specialty is casualty estimation in earthquake loss modelling and her research has led to improved understanding of the relationship between death and injury following earthquakes.   Her work and the international contacts developed have been instrumental in establishing an international network on Disaster Casualties.  She has actively engaged with earthquake‐affected communities in different parts of the world, focusing on applying her work towards making real‐ world improvements in seismic safety.  She has been involved in interdisciplinary and international collaboration through her work with the UK Earthquake Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) and the Global Earthquake Model (GEM), and is actively participating in the international debate on the way forward for earthquake risk mitigation.  She is the 2010 Shah Family Innovation Prize winner, an award given annually by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) to promising young practitioners or academics.

Dr So is a Director of Studies and Fellow in Architecture at Magdalene College and a Director of Cambridge Architectural Research Ltd.