Introductions

[UMGCCCFCSR]

Hello Everyone, Welcome to Cytometry in R!!! We are excited to finally get this mini-course started, and are glad that you have chosen to participate.

While you work through the pre-course materials, please go ahead introduce yourselves. As we mentioned in the course announcement email, quite a few people worldwide have signed up, so that should hopefully allow the Discussion Forum to be an useful place to ask questions, discuss topics, and celebrate wins as we progress through the course.

[DavidRach]

Hello Everyone, my name is David Rach, and I am the main organizer of the Cytometry in R mini-course. I am located at the University of Maryland, Baltimore where I did my PhD, and am currently working at the UMGCCC Flow Cytometry Shared Resource core.

I have been doing flow cytometry since my undergraduate, but only started coding half-way through my PhD when I went down a rabbit-hole trying to figure out a better way of isolating out secondary autofluorescent and tandem degradation signatures to improve spectral unmixing.

When not scrolling Cytometry Discord or procrastinating on writing, I enjoy coffee, kayaking and birding.

[jatin199517]

Hello Everyone, I am a scientist at a CAR T Biotech in San francisco Bay area, looking forward to learn a lot in this course.

[scatherman-UCB]

Hi All,
My name is Seana Catherman, I am a senior scientist at UCB Biosciences, a mid-sized pharmaceutical company headquartered in Belgium. I live and work in Durham, NC and have been doing flow since 2013. I started out in an academic lab at the University of Rochester studying hematopoiesis under the supervision of Jim Palis and Kathleen McGrath. I cut my teeth on the Amnis ImageStream ISX, spending many hours running samples and many days doing the imaging flow analysis. Now, on the industry side, I work in the Genomics and Integrative Biology group for UCB. We do a lot of functional genomics related activities that include sorting cells for downstream sequencing. We have a BD FACSDiscover S8 with Cell View and a Cytek Aurora Evo, both acquired in the last ~6 months, upgrading from an Aria III and a MACSQuant 16, respectively. I have a MS in Biomedical Engineering during which I used MATLAB to do all my coding, including writing scripts to do image analyses similar to the ImageStream. I am excited to learn more about what data analysis in R can support for our group and develop my own skills.

[asalboix]

Hello everyone, My name is Anna Salamero Boix, a researcher in cancer neuro-immunology.
Thank you for putting together this course, it really looks fantastic!
I have worked using conventional cytometers for some time. Now I am also using the Aurora spectral cytometer, and would be willing to know more how to analyse the data that comes from the BD S8 as well in R. While I like FlowJo -as long as AF has been extracted somewhere else-, I feel that it might be good to explore other softwares!
Looking forward to learning more about data analysis in R, and getting to you more all of you!

[sridevioh-afk]

Hello everyone, my name is Sri Devana.
Thank you very much for putting together this course.

Over the past several years, I have worked with both conventional and spectral cytometers. I have been using FCS Express, FlowJo, and OMIQ, and I also have some experience with R packages for flow cytometry data analysis. I am really looking forward to this course and to further developing my skills in analyzing flow data using R.

[benramcharitar]

Excited for the course and thank you for putting this all together! I'm Ben and I am currently at Thermo Fisher and live in Brooklyn, NY. I took a break from R after joining Thermo Fisher in 2022 but used it for flow at my previous positions. Excited to get back into it as I am sure a lot has change!

[bjcarter34]

I'm Brandon from Altos Labs in the Bay Area. I took an R course a couple of years ago with great aspirations of using it in my flow analysis. That never happened. Really appreciate this opportunity to restart that momentum! I'm a pretty poor programmer but can make things work using AI chatbots... not sure if I should be proud of this or not! :-). really looking forward to this course!

[jessbiophd]

Hi all! 👋

I’m Jess, a Senior Scientist working in cellular immunology within the Public Health Microbiology department at the UK Health Security Agency, England. Alongside this, I’m studying for a part-time PhD focused on immune markers associated with protection in TB vaccine evaluation.

I’ve been carrying out flow cytometry for around five years, originally using the BD Fortessa, and more recently the Sony ID7000 spectral analyser. I’m hoping this course will help me build some solid foundational skills for analysing our larger (40-colour!) spectral panels.

Really looking forward to getting stuck into the course and learning alongside you all! 😊

[vinced8928]

Hello everyone,
My name is Vincent and I am from Québec City, Canada. I am working at CHU de Québec-Université Laval Flow Core. I started 7 years ago with no tools and I am now running quite smoothly a core with 6 instruments (BD analyzers, sorters and a Cytek Norther Lights).

I am really excited to follow this course. I wanted to learn R since a long time and this course is perfect to start!

[syllambert]

Hi Everyone,
I'm Syl, working at the Flow Core at UofM. I started Flow Cytometry during my postdoc and always used software for analyzing data. Given the expansion of the technology, color panels, complex gating strategies, some of our users are asking for alternative ways to batch analyze their data. I'm here to educate myself then propagate the knowledge. Thank you so much for putting this course together.

[almadtenorio]

Hi All-
I am Alma Tenorio, a principal scientist at Novartis based out of San Diego California. I have about 10 years of flow cytometry experiences. I learned flow cytometry on an assortment of BD cytometers including the LSRII, Fortessa and Canto II. Now, our site has primarily BioRad Ze5 Analyzers and Cytek Auroras. I have been working more in the spectral space now for about 2 years. I am excited for the course and hope to be able to generate graphs to help better visualize complex data and get a solid foundation of R + flow cytometry analysis that I can keep building on. I appreciate the organizers and thank you in advance for your future teachings. Cheers!

[vmistry02]

Hi everyone,
I'm Vinay, working at Altos Labs in the Flow core at Cambridge (UK). I've been working in flow cytometry since 2018 and have had the opportunity to use many different cytometers (lots of BD instruments, Cytek Aurora, Sony ID7000, Attune NxT) and data analysis software (FCS Express, FlowJo, OMIQ, FlowLogic). Really looking forward to this course as I have zero experience with coding/using R and very interested in learning how this can be utilised in flow cytometry.
Many thanks in advance!

[EschukCytometry]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Danielle and I'm a Lead Medical Laboratory Scientist at Quest Diagnostics working in the area of Clinical Immunology. We operate mainly with BD Canto cytometers in our department for sub-setting and functional analysis panels as well as FCSExpress for analysis. I'm a member of ISAC/ICCS and love the webinars and conference events as well as dual-certified as SCYM/MB from ASCP. I've had a growing interest in the optical/instrumentation/engineering aspects of this field and have a desire to learn R and Python for multi-dimensional analysis which can complement the growing diagnostics industry. I intend to actively use the Github and lessons we create/learn here after the course to actively work on side projects. Thank you very much for putting together this learning course and very excited to learn alongside colleagues doing Flow from all over the world!

[drnkcampbell]

Hello! I'm Nicole, I am a Senior Research Scientist at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. I have been running flow cytometry experiments for over 10 years and I am currently working with large 30+ colour panels on the Cytek Aurora. I have been meaning to learn to code in R for many years now but never quite found the momentum (I did an intro course over 2 days once but then didn't have the motivation/support to continue learning afterwards!). I am really hopeful that pairing coding with something I am already very familiar with (flow) will make it much easier and more engaging for me to learn! Thanks so much for making this course freely available to all :)

[Tometrist-dotcom]

Hello 👋

I'm a masters student in Rabat, Morocco, and currently carrying out my research in immuno-oncology and using multiparametric flow cytometry for immunophenotyping and MRD detection in leukemia. I am picking up R for flow cytometry to add an extra layer of data analysis for my research and improve my bioinformatics skills overall.

Thank you to the organizers for offering this course. Glad to be here and can't wait to interact with everyone!

[ihg-flow]

Hello!
I'm Isabel, working as a Research Engineer in the Lund Stem Cell Center Flow Core Facility in Sweden.
I have been using flow cytometry since 2011 when I started my PhD and later on through my postdoc, based both in hematology/ immunology.
I have mostly done conventional flow and now I'm learning more about spectral. With almost no experience in bioinformatics/ coding but a couple of basic courses, I would like to learn and be able in a near future to help our users with the data from their large multicolour panels.
Looking forward to it and thank you for the opportunity!

[avi-dg]

Hi all my name's Avi, I'm a PhD student at the University of Toronto and will be analyzing suspension cyTOF data - very new to the experimental technique, programming and data analysis with R in general, so I'll need all the help I can get! Thanks for facilitating this course, excited to jump in.

[cmspencer74]

Hi everyone,

My name is Collin Spencer and I am a researcher at UCSF in San Francisco. I’ve done flow since the late 1990’s and have delved into R data analysis over the past few years. Looking forward to learnin how to incorporate these analysis strategies into my existing workflows. Looks super interesting!

[Launlab]

Hello, my name is Laura, and I am from Mexico. I developed an interest in applying R to flow cytometry data analysis, as my laboratory had not dedicated analysis software. We relied on borrowing software from another laboratory, which was stressful and limited our flexibility in data analysis.

[Nat-S3000]

Hi all,
My name is Natalie, and I am a postoc studying innate immunology and vaccinology at SAHMRI, in Adelaide, South Australia. I did my first flow experiments (on a BD FACS Canto) about 14 years ago, and have been using mostly BD instruments since (Fortessa, AriaFusion, Symphony, Melody), until we got the Cytek Aurora about 2 years ago. My panels get to about 18 colours.
I have very basic coding/computational experience - I can generate graphs and run PCA and a few other basic analyses in R, but I am keen to increase my knowledge base and generally get more confident with troubleshooting.

[TaylorClaire]

Hello,
I'm Claire and am a research fellow/technician at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, studying immunology in myeloma. I've been using flow cytometry for several years and am just contemplating the move to spectral. I've got some basic knowledge of R for data wrangling and visualisation.

[MLGRANT]

Do it Claire! Make the jump to spectral! You won't regret it & you'll never go back! :)

[FabioMambelli]

Hello Everyone, my name is Fabio Mambelli, and I am a researcher from Brazil, currently in the Netherlands. I've recently started working with R and took as a goal to be able to work on FCS files from spectral flow cytometry on R.

[rafaelaugustocordoba]

Hello Everyone: My name is Rafael, and I am a flow cytometry instructor. I do not have any previous experience using R, and I’m quite excited about learning it. I’m looking forward to learning as much as possible in this course from what it seems to be a great group of people from all over the world.

…

On Wed, Feb 4, 2026 at 12:10 PM Melanie Grant ***@***.***> wrote: Do it Claire! Make the jump to spectral! You won't regret it & you'll never go back! :) — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#5 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/B5N6CD5JJRK3FDBBQA4OQ4D4KIRXNAVCNFSM6AAAAACSBV2626VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKNRZGU4DENQ> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.*** com>

[fusamuke28]

Hi everyone!
I'm José Corrales, currently working as an assisstant cytometrist at the IMPACT Center at University of Los Andes, in Chile. I have no prior experience in R but I am looking forward to enhance my capabilities and knowledge on both flow cytometry and R!

[Silva-mari]

Hi everyone, I am a PhD student from Brazil where I study the immunopathology associated with arbovirus infections. Looking foward to learn a lot here!

[ZoeBrown24]

Hi everyone,
I'm Zoe and I'm a PhD student at the University of Leeds, studying the immune system in multiple myeloma. I have a few years experience in flow cytometry and a touch in spectral (thanks to a short stint working in a core facility). I'm hoping to strengthen my skills in coding in R and find out new ways to look at my flow cytometry data :)

[Linfopeter]

Hi everyone! My name is Pedro Reyes. I’m a PhD student in Biomedical Sciences at the Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexico. I’m passionate about data science and excited to learn and collaborate throughout this course. Greetings!

[robert123-Happy]

Hello Everyone,

I am called Robert Ruhangariyo an MSc. Student at the University of Cape Town pursuing an MSc. in Clinical Science and Immunology.
In my Project i use both mice models and Cell lines. At the same time, I work with Soroti University in Uganda, where I am coordinating to start an Immunology Laboratory. I am passionate about learning and this is a great opportunity for me to learn new skills in R and Flow

[smartiifully]

Hello,
My name is Sarai and I am a postdoctoral researcher in Spain. In my project I use mice models and normally I use spectral flow cytometry. Thanks for this course!! 👍

[gigiphalanges]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Angie Rivera, and I am a project research specialist at Moffitt Cancer Center. I work in a clinical science lab, and I've been learning flow over the past 1.5 years. I am excited to continue learning as I move into more complex flow experiments and learn how to use R to enhance analysis. I have mainly used our flow core's FACSCanto, LSR II, and Auroa.

[taianensouza]

Hi everyone,

My name is Taiane and I am a postdoctoral fellow at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I work with human sera samples from a cohort and we characterize the B cell population in patients living or not with HIV by flow cytometry. I expect develop more skills at data analysis with this course. I am little bit behind trying to learn everything, but I am confident that I will get there.