DATE2025.12.15 #Awards & Prizes

Associate Professor Takuro Ideguchi received the Shimadzu Research Promotion Award

Associate Professor Takuro Ideguchi

Associate Professor Takuro Ideguchi of Institute for Photon Science and Technology, Graduate School of Science, has received the Shimadzu Research Promotion Award 2025. We would like to extend our sincere congratulations.

This award was given in recognition of his outstanding achievement in "Development of Super-Resolution Infrared Microscopy". Associate Professor Ideguchi has led the field of mid-infrared photothermal microscopy, a new observation technique that uses visible light to detect changes in refractive index due to infrared absorption, since its dawn.

In addition to proposing and demonstrating the world's first wide-field microscopy, he has achieved numerous technological innovations, including the acquisition of 3D images of living cells using optical diffraction tomography, a significant improvement in signal-to-noise ratio using a proprietary laser light source, and the realization of ultra-high-speed measurement at 50 fps.

Recently, he discovered that the formation of a localized and steady temperature distribution in a cell by the infrared photothermal effect causes thermophoretic migration of molecules along a temperature gradient, and succeeded in the world's first label-free observation of the Ludwig-Soret effect in a cell. The Ludwig-Soret effect was also successfully observed label-free for the first time in the world. This technology is expected to make it possible to explore the relationship between intracellular fluidity and biological activities (life, death, aging, non-equilibrium fluctuations, etc.) from a new perspective.

This award is in recognition of these advanced and original research results. Associate Professor Takuro Ideguchi has been a pioneer in the development of optical measurement technology and its application to different fields, and continues to conduct a wide range of research. We sincerely look forward to his further success in the future.

Shimadzu Research Promotion Award, Shimadzu Science Foundation

(Written by : Emeritus Professor, Institute for Photon Science and Technology / Project Researcher,  Norikatsu Mio)