BOARD
C. Bruce Bagwell: President
Bruce received his B.A. at University of Connecticut in 1972, his M.D. from University of Miami in 1977 and his Ph.D. in 1979. While waiting to get into medical school, he had the opportunity to do tumor immunology research on the very first cytometer designed by Mack Fulwyler and Bob Auer. He was never the same after that experience and ultimately decided it would be more fun to help the technology grow to its full potential rather than standing over patients with a scalpel, a truly scary thought by the way.
He moved to Maine in 1982 and founded Verity Software House. From 1987 to 1995 he was the Associate Director of the Maine Medical Research Institute in Portland, Maine. Bruce began teaching Annual Course participants the art of data analysis and modeling in 1977, and since 1992 he and colleagues from Verity have served as organizers for the Annual Courses hosted at Bowdoin College.
Currently Bruce is retired and lives in Topsham, Maine but spends most of his time in his new ocean house in Georgetown, Maine. He is married to his gorgeous wife, Sandy, and has two beautiful daughters, Jennifer and Tory.
He now likes to spend his free time messing around with theoretical mathematics and playing golf with his brother-in-law, son-in-law and soon, his grandchildren.
Dagna Sheerar: Vice President
Dagna Sheerar, SCYM(ASCP)CM, has been working in Flow Cytometry Shared Resource Laboratories since shortly after receiving her BS in Microbiology from the University of Minneapolis – Twin Cities. She started out in flow in 2000 in the Immunology Services Core at the Wisconsin National Primate Center supporting HIV/AIDS vaccine research and operating a BSL-3 level sorting lab and training researchers to operate the data analysis instruments. In 2003, she took a position as core manager of the Flow Lab at Robarts Research Institute at the University of Western Ontario, before moving back to her home state of Wisconsin to work in the University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center Flow Cytometry Laboratory as an Instrumentation Technologist in 2006. In 2011, Dagna was promoted to manager and finally to director in 2021.
Dagna focuses on core administration, cytometry education, and rigor reproducibility in her daily work. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Great Lakes International Imaging and Flow Cytometry Association and serves on the SRL Educational Task Force of the International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry. She and the staff of the UWCCC Flow Lab have been hosting the Annual Course in Cytometry in rotation with other sites since 2019.
Katharine Muirhead: Secretary
Kathy earned a B.S in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Following post-doctoral fellowships in biochemistry and tumor biology, she joined the Pathology faculty at the University of Rochester, where she got hooked on the emerging discipline of flow cytometry. She subsequently served as director of the first flow cytometry core facility at SmithKline Beckman R&D, and as Senior V.P. of Research & Business Development at Zynaxis, Inc., a cell therapy start-up co-founded with colleagues from SmithKline. Since 1996, Kathy has been Chief Operating Officer of SciGro, Inc., a biomedical consultancy co-founded with Dr. Betsy Ohlsson-Wilhelm.
Kathy has served as an ISAC Councilor, Associate Editor and reviewer for Cytometry, Adjunct Professor at the Thomas Jefferson University School of Health Professions in Philadelphia, and on CLSI subcommittees developing guidelines for clinical immunophenotyping of normal and neoplastic leukocytes and for validation of flow cytometric assays. Together with Kylie Price and Paul Wallace, she co-authored the Proliferation Monitoring course offered by ISAC’s online CYTO University. As a co-founder and faculty member of the internationally recognized Annual Courses in Cytometry, she loves interacting with, teaching, and learning from cytometrists from around the world. Her research interests include cell-based immunotherapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases, and novel methods for monitoring cell trafficking and function.
Paul K. Wallace: Treasurer
Paul K. Wallace, PhD served from 2003-2021 as Director of the Flow and Image Cytometry Department and is currently Professor Emeritus at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center RPCCC) in Buffalo, NY He is a Past President of the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry an organization with over 2,000 members, active in the International Clinical Cytometry Society, and Associate Editor of Clinical Cytometry B and the 2018 recipient of their Wallace H. Coulter award for lifetime achievement in clinical cytometry.
Before joining Roswell Park, Dr. Wallace was an Assistant Professor of Immunology at Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover NH (1993-2003), a cofounder of Zynaxis Cell Science, Inc., Malvern PA (1988-1991), and the Supervisor of Flow Cytometry at SmithKline (now Quest) Clinical Laboratories King of Prussia, PA (SKCL; 1979-1988). He is internationally recognized for his commitment to flow cytometric education and has been a member of ISAC’s Educational Task Force/Committee since its inception in 2006 and of the ICCS Education committee since 2003. He has been on the faculty of the Bowdoin/New Mexico/U. of Wisconsin Annual Course in Methods and Applications of Cytometry and a member founding member of the Clinical Cytometry Educational Network.
Christopher M. Bray: Director
While in school Chris always gravitated to science and math. This led to an early interest in computers. His first exposure to computers and programming was in elementary school, Apple IIe and IIc. He started writing simple applications more regularly in high school. The decision to pursue software engineering was a natural one. After high school, he attended the University of Southern Maine, where he earned a BS in computer science.
In 2001, Chris began working for Verity Software House. This has included work on many software projects including being the primary developer for ModFit LT. The following year Chris not only attended the Annual Course in Cytometry as a student, but also assisted with its organization and operation. Since then, he has taken on additional responsibilities, including the organization of the courses taught at Bowdoin College and assisting with instruction provided in the labs.
Chris has always enjoyed learning. Software engineering in the field of cytometry has proven to be a great fit. There is always a new software challenge or biological puzzle to investigate. In addition, the Annual Course is a wonderful opportunity for others to appreciate the very same thing.
Growing up in Maine, Chris developed a great appreciation for nature and enjoyment of outdoor activities. When not unravelling the latest cytometry software challenge, he enjoys spending time with family, carpentry, gardening, hiking, and camping.
Lauren M. Nettenstrom: Director
Lauren graduated from Valparaiso University with a BS in Biology and then from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with her MS in Cancer Biology, becoming a cancer survivor along the way. She was first exposed to the world of flow cytometry while studying the role of regulatory T cells in pediatric allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases in the laboratory of Dr. Christine Seroogy at UW–Madison. After that, she worked in industry for two years optimizing the sex-based sorting of porcine sperm, and then working in Canada to help open a lab to implement that procedure.
She has been working for the UW Carbone Cancer Center Flow Cytometry Core Laboratory for over five years, after being a customer in that facility for nine years. Her favorite flow cytometry related activities are high-dimensional panel design, teaching the Intro to Flow lecture series, giving Educational Outreach talks, and learning new things from all of the customers in the lab.
In her free time, she enjoys cooking, learning about wine, and watching all kinds of nerdy television with her husband.
Yoav Altman: Director
Yoav Altman holds a B.A. degree in Integrative Biology from the University of California at Berkeley. He is Director of the Flow Cytometry Shared Resource at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute where he has guided many hundreds of researchers in the use of flow and imaging cytometry during his 20-year tenure. Since 2017, Yoav has held a Specialist in Cytometry Certification from the American Society for Clinical Pathology Board of Certification. For a recent project he devised an image analysis algorithm to identify and quantitate a new class of neutrophil-derived extracellular vesicles elevated in plasma from septic patients. Yoav particularly enjoys the creativity involved in image analysis and in 2019 organized Southern California’s first symposium on Imaging Flow Cytometry.
