Cytometry Workshops

Workshop Report

The 10th Indo-US Cytometry Workshop
Institute of Life Sciences
Bhubaneswar, India
February 16-21, 2009

Photo Album

The 10th Indo-US Cytometry Workshop on "Applications of Cytometry in Infectious Diseases" was hosted by the Institute of Life Sciences in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, India. The workshop followed the 2nd annual meeting of the Cytometry Society of India and the editorial board meeting of Cytometry A.

Fifteen faculty members from outside India joined their Indian colleagues for the week long program. Several of the visiting faculty went on lecture tours around India (Bombay, Madurai, Trivandrum, Delhi, Chandigarh) supported by Becton Dickinson and Beckman Coulter. Several ISAC members from USA, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Thailand, Singapore and Brazil attended the meetings.

Out of 48 applicants, 20 were selected for participation in the wet lab program, lectures and tutorials were open to all the local students from the neighboring institutions. Lectures in the morning were followed by wet labs (1 to 6 PM) and tutorials (9 to 11 PM). Flow analyzers were provided by Becton Dickinson, Beckman Coulter and Guava Technologies.

Student evaluations indicate that more than 86% of the attendees rated the presentations as excellent to very good and there were no major snafus or complaints. ISAC had provided a grant support of $5,000 for the 10th Indo-US workshop.

Awards: The Becton Dickinson award for excellent publication was given to Dr. Sumeet Gujral of Tata Memorial Hospital in Bombay for their leukemia panel development. The "Krishnamurthy award for Excellence in Cytometry Teaching" was established with the first award given to Dr. H. Krishnamurthy for establishing the Indian cytometry training program. The three application scientists, Drs. Sharmila Barve, T.A. Nagarjuna and Debjani Kundu were awarded prizes for excellent support and teaching in the labs. Dr. H. Krishnamurthy conducted a quiz and the best students were presented with awards.

New ISAC Memberships: The faculty members (Drs. Adelmann, Telford, Shankey, Zucker, Smith, Galbraith, Krishan, Ormerod, Krishnamurthy and Tanavde) sponsored four Indian scientists as full members in ISAC. Applications forms have been sent to Drs. Alok Srivastava, Anu Rangarajan, B. Ravindran and Shubha Chiplunkar.

Future Workshops: In view of logistic concerns, the organizing committee of the Indo-US Workshops has decided to hold the 2010 and 2011 workshops in the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore hosted by Dr. Krishnamurthy. Both Beckman Coulter and Becton Dickinson have several instruments at this location and the institutional and resort facilities are excellent for holding our next workshops. We expect to have the 2010 meeting in November on completion of a major stem cell center at NCBS.