Dr Henry Hui is an early career researcher at the University of Western Australia, a Marylou Ingram Scholar (International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry) and on the executive council for the Australian Cytometry Society. As an active biomedical scientist-cytometrist, his passion is to charter the intersection of cutting-edge cytometry technologies and methodologies to leverage new frontiers in biological discovery and clinical application. 

His multidisciplinary research leads the world in imaging flow cytometry powered precision diagnostic innovations for haematological malignancies and constitutional disorders affecting adults, children, and neonates. He is the co-inventor of the patented “Immuno-flowFISH” method, a game-changer for blood cancer testing and was awarded the highly prestigious ANSTO 2018 Eureka Prize for Innovative Use of Technology by the Australian Museum. 

He currently collaborates with tertiary hospitals, health care providers, medical technology industries and diagnostic cancer centres globally for the adoption of cytometry powered “bench to bedside” innovations. 

Paul Mead is a Principal Scientist and Director of the Translational Immunopathology laboratory in the Department of Pathology at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.  The Translational Immunopathology laboratory is responsible for developing new flow cytometry assays for the Clinical Immunopathology laboratory, where Dr Mead also serves as Technical Director, and to develop and conduct flow assays to support research aims for St Jude-led clinical trials.  The Translational Immunopathology laboratory also supports St Jude’s Global Pathology and Laboratory Medicine’s mission to provide training and assay development for pediatric hematopathologists and clinical flow labs in resource-limited settings across the globe.

 Dr Mead received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Biochemistry from Massey University, New Zealand and post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Hematology/Oncology, Children’s Hospital, Boston.  As an independent, NIH-funded investigator in the Department of Pathology, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Dr Mead’s research interests focused on the development of the hematopoietic system during early embryonic development.  For more than a decade, Dr Mead has been the Director of the Translational Immunopathology laboratory where his research interests have focused on immunophenotyping and minimal residual disease detection of pediatric hematopoietic malignancies.  Most recently, these efforts have been directed towards developing high-parameter spectral flow cytometry panels for diagnosis and treatment follow-up of pediatric leukemias in the clinical laboratory setting.

Dr. Min Shi is a board-certified hematopathologist and holds the academic rank of Associate Professor at the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Shi is a medical director of the flow cytometry laboratory at Mayo Clinic, a high-volume reference laboratory with samples from all over the world. She has led the design, validation, and implementation of many clinical flow cytometry assays, including an updated version of a T-cell panel using a novel antibody TRBC1 to establish T-cell clonality. She also led the effort to develop decision rules for NK-cell receptor restriction from large cohorts of healthy donors and NK-cell neoplasms.

Dr. Shi’s research interest is focused on diagnostic and prognostic markers for hematopoietic malignancies, particularly T-cell and NK-cell lymphoproliferative disorders. She has been awarded several grants in translational medicine and authored more than 90 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Shi has dedicated herself to education by teaching didactic lectures for residents/fellows/clinical technologists and mentoring them to conduct, present and publish research projects. She has presented multiple talks at regional, national and international conferences.

Marisa Westers (full name Theresia Maria Westers) graduated in Clinical Chemistry -specialization Hematology- in Groningen, The Netherlands, in 1989. She started working as a laboratory technician at the Central Laboratory for Blood Transfusion, nowadays Sanquin, Amsterdam) with a focus on flow cytometry and molecular diagnostics in haematological malignancies. 

Since 1998, she has worked at the department of Hematology of the Amsterdam UMC, location VU University Medical Centre, Cancer Centre Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Next to flow cytometry diagnostics, she was involved in research projects concerning T cell subsets in Multiple Sclerosis and immunotherapy in myeloid leukemia. In 2005, she finished her PhD on the subject of ‘Dendritic cell-based immunotherapy in myeloid leukemia´ under supervision of prof.dr. G.J. Ossenkoppele and prof.dr. A.A. van de Loosdrecht. 

After finishing her PhD, she continued working at the department of Hematology of the Amsterdam UMC, location VU University Medical Centre, Cancer Centre Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Here, she coordinates flow cytometry diagnostics in haematological neoplasms. Her current research subject is MDS diagnostics, risk stratification and immunopathogenesis. 

As senior scientist she coaches several PhD students. She is a member of the International/European LeukemiaNet Working Party on MDS Flow Cytometry (iELN-MDSFlow, ≥2008) and the I4MDS working group of EHA (≥2023). She actively participates in education regarding flow cytometry for in-house colleagues, in university curricula and an outreach program. Next to that, she is a speaker on MDS-flow cytometry-related subjects in (inter)national settings such as lectures on scientific findings and MDS-related flow cytometry courses e.g. for the Dutch Society of Cytometry and the ESCCA Prague School of Flow Cytometry.