Cytometry Workshops

Workshop Report

The 11th Indo-US Advanced Flow Cytometry Workshop
Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms
National Center for Biological Sciences
Tata Institute for Fundamental Research
Bangalore, India
October 19-24, 2010

Photo album

The Advanced Cytometry Workshop (19th and 24th October) immediately followed the 3rd Annual meeting of the Cytometry Society of India and the opening ceremony was attended by Prof. K. VijayRaghvan, Director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Prof. S. Ramaswamy, Dean of Institute for Stem Cell Research and Tissue Regeneration and Prof. Satyjit Mayor, Dean of NCBS.

Ms. Pratima Rao on behalf of the John Wiley & Sons presented copies of the book 'Applications of Flow Cytometry in Stem Cell Research and Tissue Regeneration' which was based on presentations made at the 9th Indo-US Cytometry workshop hosted by NCBS in 2008.

Out of the 150 applicants, 26 students were selected from different parts of India and one from the USA for wet lab training. All the selected students had attended the basic flow cytometry course one month earlier (September 14th to 17th, 2010) at NCBS. The basic course was taught by Paresh Jain and H. Krishnamurthy and six teaching assistants.

Eighteen faculty members including seven from abroad participated in the week-long hands on workshop. The students were taught how to prepare their own samples and acquire and analyze their data. The labs were conducted with the active support of 18 teaching associates who helped in preparation of samples and conduct of experiments and operation of flow analyzers. Eleven flow analyzers and technical support for instrument operation and supplies were provided by Accuri, Beckman Coulter, Becton Dickinson, Millipore/Guava/Merck, Partec, Amnis and Attune.

All 26 selected students had an option of participating in two out of the following seven wet lab modules offered: Apoptosis (Ormerod and Dikshit), Cell cycle and Proliferation (Krishan and Hamelik), Cell signaling (Shankey and Mallick), Clinical flow cytometry (Gujral,, Madkaikar) Cytokines (Arora), Multicolor Immunophenotyping (Jain, Wood, Subramanian and Sehgal), and Stem cells (Rangarajan, Telford and Tanavde). The Clinical flow cytometry module was facilitated by the participation of clinical pathologists from the Kidwai Cancer Hospital and St. John's Medical Center (Devi, Madhumathi, Ramesh).

In addition, tutorials on color compensation (Hamelik), chromosome sorting (Cram) and data analysis (Agarwal of Flow Jo) were presented.

Student evaluations of the faculty were collected and analyzed by Krishnamurthy and Cram. On a score of 1-5 (poor to outstanding), all faculty and labs were rated by students as 4.0 or higher. The students were also evaluated by taking a test on the basics of flow cytometry and two advanced cytometry modules they attended.

The key note address was given by Ger Van Engh and the graduation ceremony and awarding of certificates was presided over by Ranbir Sobti, Vice Chancellor of the Panjab University, India.

Awards: The top performers of each advanced cytometry module received the Awtar Krishan Prize (a certificate and INR 1,000 cash prize).

New ISAC Memberships: An ISAC membership drive resulted in recruitment of 14 (four full and 10 student) new members. The visiting faculty provided funds to defer two thirds of the application fee for the student members.