Contact the Flow Cytometry Facility
Physical Location:
MRB
Colorado State University
Room 479D
Fort Collins, CO 80523
Mailing Address:
1682 Campus Delivery
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
Office Information:
Email: flow-core@colostate.edu
Phone: (970) 491-0573

Dr. Marcela Henao-Tamayo, Director
Dr. Marcela Henao-Tamayo started her flow cytometry research in clinical settings during medical school in Colombia. In 2003 she came to CSU, initially as a graduate student, where she continued studying M. tuberculosis host-pathogen interactions using animal models. Over the last 12 years, she has developed numerous flow cytometry protocols to perform studies on both mice and guineas pigs infected with virulent clinical strains of TB under highly restrictive BSL-3 conditions. She attended formal training courses where she received operator and analysis certifications for several instruments: DakoCytomation MOFlO, 2004; BD LSRII, 2006; BD FACSAria III cell sorting, 2012. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology and oversees all the hazardous/high-risk experiments performed inside the BSL-3 facility with the BD LSR-II and FACSAria III cytometers/sorters. Additionally, Marcela conducts an active research program in immuno-pathology of tuberculosis.

Dr. Taru Dutt, Co-Director
Email: taru.dutt@colostate.edu
Dr. Taru S. Dutt is currently a Research Scientist in Dr. Marcela Henao-Tamayo’s lab in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology at Colorado State University. One of the questions that has intrigued her is how Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) manipulates the host immune system and utilizes it for its benefit. Therefore she has devoted her studies to investigating the pathogenesis and immune response to Mtbinfection. Dr. Dutt’s technical expertise includes designing and executing multicolor high-dimensional flow cytometry, and using downstream data to the immunological questions. Additionally, Dr. Dutt has gained expertise in next-generation sequencing techniques like single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA seq) and spatial transcriptomics (spatial scRNA-seq), which she employs in her research to investigate the immune system at the transcriptional level and at single-cell resolution. Using these techniques, she has exhaustively characterized various immune cell populations in animal models and human samples against Mtb and SARS-CoV-2 infections. Dr. Dutt is also proficient in R and bash shell programming, enabling her to analyze flow cytometry, transcriptomics, and other large datasets efficiently and objectively.

Lizzy Creissen, Lab Manager
Email: e.creissen@colostate.edu
Lizzy Creissen graduated from Colorado State University with a bachelor’s in Microbiology and has been with the Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology department ever since. She has worked in BSL-2 and BSL-3 settings conducting and running flow cytometry samples for CSU research projects ranging from M. tuberculosis vaccine research to Microbiome studies. She has experience using machines such as the LSRII, FacsCanto, Cytek Aurora and FacsAria. As lab manager of the Flow Core, she is dedicated to maintaining a working and functional space and organizing and helping with flow needs for our researchers here at CSU. Lizzy feels the best when she is able to help and assist other to accomplish their goals!