Spotlight on Excellence: Talks by President’s Award and Exceptional Student Award Recipients

THE SPEAKERS 

Dr. Thomas Ashhurst, Senior Cytometry Scientist and Honorary Research Fellow
Exceptional Student Award Recipient, 2017

Dr. Thomas Ashhurst is a Senior Cytometry Scientist with the Sydney Cytometry Core Research Facility and an Honorary Research Fellow in infectious disease and immunology at the University of Sydney. In these roles he specialises in the use of cutting edge high-dimensional cytometry, single-cell, and spatial multiomics technologies for interrogating cellular systems.

Dr. Daniel Wang, Group Leader
President's Award for Excellence, 2025

Dr. Zongjie (Daniel) Wang is a Group Leader at the Bi[o]hub (formerly the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 2022. His research focuses on the design and application of microsystems for next-generation precision medicine, including high-throughput cell sorting technologies and implantable sensors for spatial and temporal multi-omics. Dr. Wang has published 50 journal articles, edited one book, and holds eight patents worldwide. His work has been recognized by multiple prestigious honors, including the ISAC President’s Award for Excellence, ISAC International Innovator Award, UBC Young Alumni Achievement Award, and the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Prize. He is also the co-founder of CTRL Therapeutics, a biotechnology startup developing novel cell therapies.

         
WEBINAR SUMMARY
This webinar will feature two 20-minute presentations by distinguished past award recipients. Each year at the CYTO meeting, early-career scientists compete for these highly regarded honors, which recognize outstanding scientific achievement and promise. The competitions are open to all eligible CYTO attendees, making these awards among the most competitive and prestigious recognitions within the community.

In addition to being honored at CYTO, award recipients are invited to present a CYTO U Webinar, providing the broader community with the opportunity to learn directly from their innovative research and insights.

To learn more about these awards, please visit the ISAC Awards page.

Decoding Rare Cell Biology with Ultra-High-Throughput Magnetic Ranking Cytometry – Presented by Daniel Wang
Cellular therapies - the use of living cells as therapeutics - have transformed our ability to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases. Yet, the vast number of cells required for therapeutic manufacturing far exceeds the capacity of current single-cell profiling and sorting technologies. In this talk, he will introduce Magnetic Ranking Cytometry (MagRC), a new platform for ultra-high-throughput cell capture, sorting, and molecular profiling. MagRC leverages functionalized magnetic nanoparticles to perform quantitative, phenotype-linked molecular analysis at the single-cell level, enabling the profiling of billions of cells simultaneously. He has applied MagRC to isolate rare therapeutic cell populations from complex biofluids, including circulating tumor cells (Nature BME, 2021) and tumor-reactive lymphocytes (Nature BME, 2022, 2023). The same framework has been adapted for customized molecular discovery, such as the rapid selection of affinity-programmed antibodies (Nature Chemistry, 2023) and the identification of small-molecule secretion inhibitors (Nature BME, 2024). By combining throughput, precision, and gentleness, MagRC offers a new paradigm for discovering, manufacturing, and delivering next-generation therapies.

Multimodal Cellular and Spatial Analyis – Presented by Thomas Ashhurst
In this talk, Dr. Thomas Ashhurst will present new methods in multi-modal analysis of cellular and spatial data.

KEYWORDS: ISAC Webinar Featuring ESA and PAE Winners, Microfluidics, Rare Cells, Immunotherapy, Cell Sorting, Cytometry, single-cell, spatial, multiomics, integration

CMLE Credit: 1.0