Alex Sohn
Meta Reality Labs
Alex Sohn is a precision engineer at Meta Reality Labs. After receiving his MS in physics from UT Arlington in 1994, Alex began his working career at Fresnel Technologies. It was in 1995 that Alex attended his first ASPE meeting in Austin. After attending the 1996 meeting, he received a letter from founding member Dr. Tom Dow announcing a vacant position of staff researcher/lecturer at NC State University’s Precision Engineering Center. Alex remained at NC state for 15 years teaching and researching precision manufacturing and metrology as well as mentoring dozens of students while, himself, benefitting from the mentorship of Tom Dow. In 2012, Alex transitioned back to industry, this time L3’s Tinsley labs, where he worked on various diamond turning, metrology and sub-aperture polishing projects for space and defense. This included the optical elements for the earth-observing multi-spectral imager PhyTiR, now deployed on the International Space Station’s ECOSTRESS module for six years. In 2015, Alex was recruited by Oculus Research (now Meta’s Reality Labs) to lead optics prototyping and manufacturing research for virtual and augmented reality. Some of the most notable accomplishments of his work have been his contributions to Meta’s first Augmented Reality headset, Orion, revealed just this year, and the development of manufacturing technology for pancake lenses, now the standard for imaging optics in Virtual Reality headsets.
Alex has missed only one ASPE meeting in his 29 years as member and has authored and presented many conference papers, chaired two annual meetings, co-chaired three topical meetings, served two terms as director-at-large, nominating committee chair and bylaws committee chair. He headed the effort to fund the Thomas Dow scholarship in 2022 and sponsored several student challenges. He believes in maintaining sustainable growth of the society and in finding new ways for the society to serve its members.