About Us
Discover Our Story: Innovation, Passion, and Commitment Redefined
Our Story
Modern flow cytometry originated in the late 1960s in the Herzenberg Laboratory at Stanford University, and as the utility and power of cytometers evolved into the 1990s, the need arose for a more powerful and user-friendly analysis and display program. FlowJo® was conceived in the laboratory to address this need and easily analyze flow cytometry data and was primarily written by Mario Roederer and Adam Treister, based on concepts developed with David Parks, Martin Bigos, and Wayne Moore.
Our founders collaborated on the first prototypes for FlowJo® – Mario worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the Herzenberg lab and drove the evolution of the multicolor flow cytometry, and Adam served as a scientific programmer for the lab in 1995, as the analysis requirements of the multi-parametric data being gathered at Stanford had outgrown the power of any commercial software application. The first version of FlowJo® was born as the next generation of the DESK software which was being used for analysis; Mario and Adam licensed the technology from Stanford and in 1997, FlowJo™ Version 2 was released commercially as a Macintosh-only application.
The Company
For over 20 years, the team behind FlowJo™ has contributed to critical advances in medicine and life science through our powerful and user-friendly analysis flagship software for flow cytometry and single-cell analysis. Flow cytometry is a critical tool in advances in our understanding and diagnosis of critical diseases including cancer, HIV, and infectious diseases. Cytometry is a technique which allows the simultaneous measurement of many characteristics of individual cells at several thousand cells per second, and our work revolves around the science of single cells. FlowJo™ is widely accepted as the most sophisticated and powerful analysis tool in the field for the management, display, manipulation, analysis and publication of the large data stream produced by flow and mass cytometers.
In 2017, we joined BD (Becton, Dickinson & Company), a global medical technology company that is advancing the world of health by improving medical discovery, diagnostics and the delivery of care. FlowJo, LLC became the Informatics platform and Center of Excellence within BD Life Sciences. As ever, we are science-first and are committed to continuing to work with customers no matter what brand of flow cytometer or single cell sequencing technology they use.
The People Behind the Flow
Mario Roederer, Ph.D. was a Senior Investigator at the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Harvey Mudd College, a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Carnegie Mellon, and completed postdoctoral training at Stanford. He has pioneered flow cytometry immunophenotyping and data analysis techniques, leading to 30+ color analysis and sorting.
The People Behind the Flow
Mario Roederer, Ph.D. was a Senior Investigator at the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Harvey Mudd College, a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Carnegie Mellon, and completed postdoctoral training at Stanford. By 2016, he had co-authored over 300 papers, developed five widely-used software titles, and held eight patents. He was inducted into the Stanford University Invention Hall of Fame.
His research focuses on advanced single cell analysis technology and T and B cell immunology. He has pioneered flow cytometry immunophenotyping and data analysis techniques, leading to 30+ color analysis and sorting. His lab now also integrates flow cytometry with high content transcriptomics. Key projects include studying T cell dynamics in HIV/SIV, immune responses to vaccines and pathogens, novel vaccine development for diseases like TB and HIV, and the genetic/environmental influences on immune homeostasis and autoimmunity.
Adam Treister worked at Stanford’s IT Department, collaborating with the Herzenberg Laboratory on flow cytometry. He developed the GUI for cytometric data analysis and later commercialized FlowJo™. Adam has published extensively and now tackles data integration challenges as a Senior Bioinformatics Engineer at UCSF’s Gladstone Institutes.
Come Work With Us!
Are you interested in joining the FlowJo team? Please see our available positions by searching the Ashland, OR location at BD.
