UC Davis Comprehensive Course in Flow Cytometry - ONLINE Workshop February 8-12, 2021

This comprehensive flow cytometry course covers the full spectrum of basic to advanced flow cytometry concepts in lecture sessions led by the UC Davis Flow Cytometry Core laboratory staff. This year the course will be offered in an online format and has been tailored to use teleconferencing software to best convey important topics in online lecture sessions and live video “labs” with your instructors. These sessions are designed to put cytometry theory into practice using many of our UC Davis cytometers plus instrumentation and software demonstrations provided by our vendor partners to teach you to a variety of established and new flow cytometry approaches. Special guest speakers will introduce new trends and advances in flow cytometry. Thanks to many generous sponsors we are able to continue to offer this popular course and encourage you to join us this summer for another fun week of flow education.

There is one option for attendance:

Full curriculum: Lecture plus afternoon laboratory sessions – limited to 50 participants 

The course objectives are:

·      Learn the fundamental concepts of how flow cytometers work

·      Explain the physical and electronic concepts in light collection and signal processing

·      Discuss best practices in sample preparation for flow cytometry

·      Describe standard assays and techniques

·      Introduce new cutting-edge technologies and applications for single cell analysis and genomics

·      Demystify multicolor cell staining, compensation and analysis

Laboratory sessions include:

·      UC Davis LSRII: Software setup for successful multicolor acquisition and analysis

·      UC Davis Astrios Cell Sorter: Cell sorting fundamentals using the Beckman Coulter Astrios

·      Cytometer setup and quality control for consistent performance

·      Principles and Advantages of Spectral Cytometry on the Cytek Aurora

·      Multicolor Panel Design workshop

·      FlowJo basic and advanced flow cytometry data analysis

·      And more!

Special guest speakers: TBD

The daily schedule from the 2018 course can be downloaded by clicking here

Who should attend?

Prior course participants have included faculty, post-doctoral researchers, graduate students, staff, motivated high school students (!) and researchers from our industry partners.

What are the prerequisites?

Flow cytometry is now used across a broad spectrum of biological research programs. As such, there are no prerequisites other than familiarity with general biological concepts and a desire to learn about fluorescence, flow cytometry and cell sorting. Some general laboratory experience in working with live cells is helpful, particularly immunofluorescence microscopy and cell staining.

What do I need to bring? The course will be offered online to comply with the current campus restrictions that prohibit large gatherings to limit the spread of COVID-19 infection. All course materials will be provided electronically, and lecture materials as well as many of our guest and vendor partner presentations will be made available in a PDF format. It will be necessary to have a laptop or tablet to participate in the course and follow along with the lecture materials. We will be working with FlowJo software in the data analysis demonstrations (during lecture sessions) and in the FlowJo lab. FlowJo version 10 will work on either Mac or PC and you can download a free trial during the course to use if you wish.

Can I provide my own samples? The laboratory sessions will use previously prepared samples geared toward specific teaching goals, so we won’t have time to work with individual samples during our virtual demonstrations. Please bring your questions, as the lab sessions are a great time to discuss the details and issues with your current or planned cytometry experiments.

Can I bring my own data? We will provide experimental data sets during the workshop to keep everyone on track and to illustrate important concepts. If you have specific questions, please bring them, or flow plots from your own analysis or a print out for us to look over and offer advice. During the latter part of the week we’ll cover multicolor panel design and will have an interactive group session to field “live” panel design requests from our students.

How much does it cost?

Registration fees include all lecture and laboratory materials. Lecture materials will be provided as PDF slides detailing key flow cytometry concepts in a format that begins with flow cytometry fundamentals and progresses to include advanced topics such as multicolor panel design, troubleshooting, artifact identification, and data analysis.

For the full lecture plus laboratory curriculum, the registration fees are as follows:

·      UC Davis faculty, student or staff: $900.00

·      Non UC Davis Academic or Not-For-Profit participants: $1,100.00

·      Industry participants: $1,495.00

Where is the course? The course is held in Davis, CA, your instructors will be on-site and in their flow cytometry core laboratories to bring you the best “virtual” experience in a professional environment.

Questions?

 

If you have any questions, please contact Bridget at bmclaughlin@ucdavis.edu