Thomas G. Brown: The 2025 SPIE G.G. Stokes Award in Optical Polarization

Thomas Brown, a professor and director of the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics, has been a faculty member at the institute since 1987. Brown began his work in optics and optoelectronics in 1978 as an optical fiber systems designer at GTE Laboratories. While there, he wrote the systems modeling software which was used to design the first live-traffic 1.3 μm optical fiber telephone link. Since that time, he has had consultancies and technical collaboration with companies such as Qualcomm, IBM, Corning, ABB Kent-Taylor, Amp, Rockwell, Rochester Gas and Electric, and Emerson Corporation, along with several law firms and a number of industrial associates of the Institute of Optics. Recent research work has included focusing and coherence properties of polarization vortex beams; stress-engineered optical elements; polarization properties of nanostructures; and waveguide mode resonances in SOI waveguides.  Brown is frequently asked to provide expert consulting in a wide range of areas in optical systems, photonics, and the application of light-based technologies to a wide range of manufacturing applications, including emerging areas of photonics.

Brown, an SPIE Fellow, holds 19 US patents. He has been the recipient of an IBM Young Investigator Faculty Development Award, the University of Rochester’s Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor recognition, and the university’s Goergen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, among other accolades. His contributions to SPIE include chairing BiOS' Three-Dimensional and Multidimensional Microscopy: Image Acquisition and Processing conference, and sitting on the conference program committee of Optics Modeling and Performance Predictions at SPIE Optics + Photonics.

“Thomas Brown’s exquisite insights into polarization optics have had large impact in the field, although his expertise goes much beyond that,” says University of Oxford’s Chair in Optical and Photonics Engineering Martin Booth. “I remember first encountering his work over 20 years ago, when I was a doctoral student. His work on high numerical aperture focusing of complex vector beams was a fascinating introduction for me to the wonders of polarization effects in microscopes. Over subsequent years, he developed this work further, investigating the physics of complex polarized beams and focusing in many different ways. This work was novel, advanced, and instructive. It has certainly influenced work in my own group in the different areas of microscopic imaging, laser-based nano-fabrication, and polarimetry. In addition, his development of the 'stress engineered optic' as a versatile polarization element is particularly notable. This is a simple concept that still amazes me to this day — by compressing a glass disk at three points on the circumference, one creates a stress (and hence birefringence) field that can be used to generate complex vector beams, including full Poincaré beams. Such a simple device permits use of complex optical concepts in different applications, including sensitive polarimetry. He has worked with collaborators to develop these physical concepts into applications, including recently for the determination of molecular emitter states in super-resolution single molecule localization microscopy. The methods have also been used in quantum optics, polarimetry, and fiber optical applications. I consider Professor Brown to be one of the most talented scientists working in this field and his technical accomplishments range across many different areas of optics. For this reason, the Stokes award is entirely fitting.”

Meet the other 2025 SPIE Society Award recipients.

Read more about Thomas G. Brown and the SPIE G.G. Stokes Award in Optical Polarization.