CiteAb Awards Highlight: Educational Initiative of the Year Award
5
Min Read
In this blog:
- Learn about the inspiration behind the Educational Initiative Award
- Discover new educational resources to help in your research
- Sign up to our newsletter to stay up to date with future award news!
Having worked closely with many reagent companies over the years, we have found their efforts to advance research progress often go unmarked.
In response, we launched the CiteAb Awards – a celebration of the research reagent sector. They have run for ten years, with over 50 different suppliers recognised over this time.
Each awards cycle, we introduce new categories to reflect themes we have seen emerge in the industry.
This year, we introduced the Educational Initiative of the Year Award for the first time, and named the Bio-Rad Academy, Fundamentals of Flow Cytometry as the winner.
Below, find out more about the 2024 winner, our impressive panel of independent judges and the inspiration behind this award!
Why did we introduce The Educational Initiative of the Year Award category?
In 2023, we held the 4th International Antibody Validation Meeting at the University of Bath. This unique meeting addresses best practice in research antibody validation and helps drive improvements for the life science community.
(If you’re a researcher who uses antibodies frequently or an antibody company, we encourage you to read a little more about the abval meeting and register your interest for the 2025 event!)
A key discussion point that emerged from this meeting was the importance of education and awareness in making change.
We came away inspired by these discussions, and we were curious to ask the industry: what initiatives are out there helping scientists already? Which educational resources can we help share through our awards?
The Educational Initiative of the Year Award winner: Bio-Rad Academy, Fundamentals of Flow Cytometry
Taking the win in this category was the Bio-Rad Academy. Our judges felt it excelled in the areas of quality, novelty, reach and overall impact made to scientists. Since launch, the course has seen an impressive >11,000 enrolments.
‘Fundamentals of Flow Cytometry’ is a ten-part online course for scientists of all levels.
It focuses on the basics of flow cytometry, and how to generate reproducible data, by including modules such as: ‘Flow Cytometry Basics’, ‘Target Protein Detection’, ‘Inside a Flow Cytometer’, ‘Fluorescence and Flow Cytometry Principles’, ‘Data Acquisition and Analysis’, ‘Sample Preparation Essentials’, ‘How to Use Controls’, ‘Successful Multicolour Flow Cytometry’, ‘Cell Sorting Essentials’, and ‘Planning Flow Cytometry Experiments’.
To encourage engagement, elements such as powerpoints, quizzes and subtitles are included, as well as an online flow cytometry community for Q&A with other participants.
Here’s what Bio-Rad said about the resource:
Bio-Rad is built on a foundation of collaboration as a fundamental aspect of scientific discovery. This includes sharing our knowledge and helping others understand best practices to help educate the scientific community and accelerate research. Bio-Rad Academy is designed to do just that. Through our ‘Fundamentals of Flow Cytometry’ course, we aim to help scientists at all levels who are looking to gain a detailed understanding of the basics of flow cytometry, and to learn how to generate high-quality, reproducible data. The academy also serves as an online community for scientists working in flow cytometry to seek advice and share ideas. It is wonderful to have received CiteAb’s Educational Initiative of Year award in recognition of our contributions to scientific collaboration through education.
The Bio-Rad team
You can explore the resource for yourself here: https://academy.bio-rad.com/collections/flow-cytometry
Highly Commended: Bio-Techne – Spatial Biology Educational Initiative
Also scoring very highly were the team at Bio-Techne, named as Highly Commended for their Spatial Biology Educational Initiative.
This initiative involved a variety of activities. Some examples include a spatial biology tour which encompassed 15 cities; their first School of Scope, which brought together over 100 scientists to participate in technical masterclasses, panel discussions and posters; and a new wet workshop for spatial profiling.
You can learn more about their spatial biology work here:
https://www.bio-techne.com/about/events/schoolofrnascope
The judges
For this award, we had a panel of three impressive independent judges score nominations from a range of companies. Meet them below:
- Andrew Buchanan: Principal Scientist at AstraZeneca
- Andrea Radtke: Associate Scientist/Staff Scientist
- Momna Hejmadi: Associate Pro Vice Chancellor (education) at the University of Bath
Determining a winner was no easy feat. Thank you to all nominators and judges in this category – and congratulations again to our winners!
Get your nomination ready for next year!
We were really impressed with all the initiatives nominated in this category. The difference that resources such as these can make to researchers and their research progress is not to be underestimated.
We are really looking forward to running this category again in our 2025 awards given the calibre of nominations this year. So, start thinking about your nominations now!
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- Rebecca and the CiteAb team
