Kyle Lorentsen Email & Phone Number

I firmly believe that when it comes to scientific methods, the "why" is often just as important as the "what". Too often, I’ve found the answer to why a lab performs a certain step is “Because it works”. I have personally seen this mindset lead to the continued use of long-obsolete protocols and ultimately a stagnation in progress for an entire laboratory. It is this attitude that I work daily to challenge.My background in engineering left me with a desire to understand the inner-workings of the many techniques that I’ve come to know in Immunology and a constant thirst for improvement. This put me in a great position to bring new methods (and improve old ones) to my lab during my graduate program. Initially, this involved me being given the task of developing a pipeline for analyzing microbiome data (rather than outsourcing it as had always been done). With that step a success, it quickly evolved into researching new sequencing methods (such as ATAC-Sequencing), ironing out the protocols for our use, and finally developing pipelines to analyze the resulting data for our lab and collaborators.As a result of this work, I was able to save the lab a large sum of money and time by teaching my colleagues to perform all of the sequencing and analysis steps themselves. By the time I left, multiple sequencing methods were a major part of nearly every current project in the lab.In terms of optimizing already established protocols, the most notable example is flow cytometry. Multicolor flow cytometry played a major part in my lab, with at least 1 person acquiring samples every day. By teaching everyone how to make informed choices on marker-fluorophore options, as well as slight tweaks to our staining protocols, the flow cytometry quality in the lab’s publications has noticeably improved over the past 5+ years.Specialties: Multi-color flow cytometry, Bioinformatics, Protocol development and optimization, DNA/RNA library synthesis, Cell-culture

Listed skills include Research, Bioinformatics, Multi Color Flow Cytometry, Science, and 18 others.