Hi there! I am really excited about the opportunity to become an ISAC Councilor and I am seeking your support for my candidacy.
Why am I a good candidate for the position? I share with you a great passion for flow cytometry in all its aspects. Some key points are close to my hearth, and I believe I can help others within our society on the following topics:
- Shared Resource Laboratories (SRLs)
Managing and building up a large academic SRL over the past 12 years, I have gained quite some experience and I want to share this knowledge with people in our society. During these years, I could benefit from my ISAC network and participation in the CYTO meetings. Following the famous SRL best practices paper, the different guidelines papers in Cytometry Part A, listening to tips and tricks from peers within the ISAC society, helped me in elevating our SRL to its current status. I believe I’m ready to return this tremendous help and it is time to pay it forward to our community. I have been involved in ISAC committees with a focus on SRLs since 2016 and plan to continue doing this.
A crucial mission for ISAC is facilitating the exchange of knowledge in cytometry. As SRLs, disseminating information, organizing trainings comes naturally to us, not only to researchers but also the wider public. I am ready to contribute to ISACs mission and to help in further developing the tools and platforms needed to reach this goal.
- Technology development
Over the years I have gained expertise in collaborating on national and international level with other SRLs, researchers, clinicians, bioinformaticians, tech developers and vendors. My strength is bringing people together and creating a positive atmosphere to make sure science and innovation can thrive. I always have a clear goal on developing tools and devices that will benefit the field of flow cytometry. A great example is our ongoing collaboration with BD Biosciences where our team was involved in the prototype testing of the Image-enabled cell sorter. Another example is our recent publication in Cytometry Part A on automated antibody dispensing to improve high-parameter flow cytometry which will bring more automation and standardization to the field of flow cytometry. Finally, there is the interaction with the VIB bioinformatics team of Prof. Yvan Saeys and Sofie Van Gassen. This team has developed FlowSOM, PeacoQC and other algorithms, used by many of us in the society, and here our SRL was also involved. Over the past few years, we have been actively sharing this knowledge with ISAC through workshops and presentations, a practice we intend to continue.
- Community building
Since my first CYTO meeting in Fort Lauderdale in 2014, I have attended all meetings and I can truly say that I have made friends in flow for life. The ISAC society is an open and welcoming community of people. As a councilor I will keep this high on the agenda and will do efforts to make ISAC an even more global, inclusive, and diverse community.
VIB, located in Flanders (Belgium) in the hearth of Europe, is an institute where more than 75 nationalities work together. Working for more than 20 years in such an international and diverse environment, I can only witness the extra value of diversity. Bringing people together from all over the world in a vibrant positive workplace and supporting them with the best technology is for me what science is all about. This is where the magic begins and where we as scientists can bring benefit to society.
Gert Van Isterdael Biography:
Gert Van Isterdael has been active in the field of flow cytometry for almost 20 years. His passion for flow started around 2005 with plant protoplast cell sorting at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology working together with plant researchers and collaborating
with the pioneers in the field (Prof. David Galbraith, ISAC member).
In early 2013, he joined the VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research (IRC) in the Lambrecht and Hammad lab. He became responsible for all flow cytometers and cell sorters (6 devices) located at IRC and was strongly involved in the conception of the IRC Flow Core facility, which matured in the VIB Flow Core Ghent. Under his leadership the VIB Flow Core has become a top academic core facility within Europe and the core is actively involved in benchmarking and testing new technologies. Currently the core has 12 analyzers and 7 cell sorters.
Gert has a strong passion for bringing together people and creating vibrant collaborations. The VIB Flow Core has always worked closely together with the VIB-IRC team of Prof. Yvan Saeys and Sofie Van Gassen, both ISAC Scholars. This has led to the development of successful algorithms in the field of flow (FlowSOM, CytoNorm, PeacoQC).
Gert Van Isterdael is an active member of ISAC, the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry and has received an ISAC SRL Emerging leader award (2016-2020) and the RMS Award for Flow Cytometry 2021.
His involvement with ISAC started when he attended his first meeting in 2014 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and since then Gert has been attending and actively participating at all CYTO meetings. He has organized and contributed to several workshops and has chaired and co-chaired plenary and parallel sessions. Over the years, he has served on the ISAC SRL services committee (contributing to the setup of the ISAC SRL recognition program and the SRL Networking event) and is currently on the SRL Outreach Sub-committee (committee that is publishing the quarterly ISAC SRL Newsletter). Since this year he joined the ISAC Leadership Development Committee, chaired by Jonathan Irish, and has been, together with Rachael Walker, the track lead for the SRL Emerging Leader program (review and selection of the SRL ELs).
On a local level, Gert is involved in many educational flow programs. Gert is an active teacher and gives courses on panel design, data acquisition and analysis and organizes “Introduction to Flow cytometry” sessions to over 200 students every year. He is a member of BSAC (Belgian Society for Advancement of Cytometry), CTLS (Core Technologies for Life Sciences) and is part of the Core4Life flow workgroup. He actively participates and was invited as a speaker on European flow cytometry meetings (RMS flow cytometry UK, Dutch Flow Group meeting, German DGFZ meeting, French ACS meeting, 1st Virtual European flow core meeting).
Being passionate about flow cytometry technology, Gert has been heavily involved in the prototype testing of the first image-enabled cell sorter from BD Biosciences (BD). A partnership between BD and VIB has been ongoing since 2020. Next to this partnership with BD, Gert’s team has recently published a paper in Cytometry Part A about automated antibody dispensing to improve high parameter flow cytometry throughput and analysis.
Publication list:
Co-author (+45 papers)
• https://scholar.google.be/citations?user=oh5MsUQAAAAJ&hl
• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6626-1316
Links:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gert-van-isterdael-b4146a13/
• VIB Flow Core: https://flowcore-gent.sites.vib.be/en
• X: @VIBFlowCoreGT