About
Flowjoanna is about providing top notch flow cytometry support to researchers, scientists and flow cytometry users.
I am Joanna Roberts and I have 18 years of experience with flow cytometry working on many types of projects. Flowjoanna is an opportunity for me to bring my enjoyment of this technology as well as my in-depth knowledge to experiments needing complex multi-colour panels, cell sorting, cell cycle, cell death, in-depth data analysis, proliferation, and more.
I worked on a short thesis project with Prof Graham Le Gros on the T cell response to Influenza at the start of my career in my early twenties. Following that, I worked as a research officer with Prof Franca Ronchese exploring aspects of DC vaccination to prime T cell responses. I was appointed staff scientist at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research to establish the flow cytometry core facility with the stream in air cell sorter purchased in the early 2000s. I worked closely with immunologists at the MIMR during this time to support their projects using flow. In 2006 I was appointed head of the flow cytometry platform at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Ecole Polytechique Federal de Lausanne) in Switzerland where I developed the flow facility extensively. I worked with stem cell biologists, immunologists, bioengineers (publishing with Melody Swartz in Science in 2010), environmental biologists (publishing with Vera Slaveykova) and others. I joined AgResearch Ltd in New Zealand as a flow cytometry specialist until 2013 (having returned to New Zealand to the family land belonging to my husband, along with our young son).
As Flowjoanna, I work with a number of crown research institute projects, with universities, and for commercial companies. I provide a broad range of support from training in basic principles and successful instrument operation to hands on in the lab doing the experiment. I review data and analyse flow cytometry data for customers.
Member of Australasian Cytometry Society (ACS), member of International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC), member of the Australasian Society for Immunology (ASI). Editor of the Australasian Society for Immunology Quarterly Newsletter.