He was one of 73 new Fellows of the society this year who were recognized for their significant scientific and technical contributions of each in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. SPIE Fellows are honored for their technical achievements and for their service to the general optics community and to SPIE in particular.
Toussaint has been a pioneer in developing quantitative second-harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy as a label-free imaging method for quantitation of the collagen fiber organization in tissues. He has pushed this technology through the development of quantitative metrics that exploit intrinsic advantages of SHG microscopy, namely, specificity/contrast, coherence, optical sectioning, and high spatial resolution. He has also developed a strong research program in plasmonics. His group has demonstrated plasmon-enhanced tweezing of single and multiple particles, nanometer and micron-sized, and both metal and dielectric. He has also used his nanoantennas to demonstrate audio recording by way of the “optical sound” effect, and the creation of optofluidic channels “without walls.”
He has given extensive service to the optics community, participating in various roles with multiple professional societies. He is regularly involved in STEM outreach activities with underrepresented communities, helping to run professional development workshops for the Institute on Teaching and Mentoring conference, an alliance of foundations and organizations including the NSF, Sloan Foundation, and the NIH. He is an active reviewer for a range of research journals and is currently on the editorial board of Scientific Reports, where he serves as an editor for the electronics, photonics, and device physics content area. He is also a topical editor for plasmonics and metamaterials for Applied Optics, and is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.
Toussaint’s service to SPIE has been significant. He has published more than a dozen SPIE conference proceedings papers and has presented at many of the associated conferences for either a contributed article or invited paper. He frequently publishes in the Journal of Biomedical Optics. He has also served on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the SPIE co-sponsored Third International Conference on Optical Angular Momentum. He has been an associate editor for the Journal of Nanophotonics and has served as a guest editor for the Journal of Biomedical Optics.
He has received many honors and awards. Among them are the NSF CAREER Award, the College of Engineering Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence. He was previously a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.