Mario Roederer (NIH)
Welcome to Flow Stars. Candid conversations between doctor Peter O'Toole and the big hitters of flow cytometry. Brought to you by Beckman Coulter at Bite Size Bio.
Peter O'Toole:Hello. And welcome to this packed episode of Flow Stars with the one and only one of the biggest names in flow cytometry, Mario Rodera. He talks us through the highs and lows of his long career, including how poorly he was thought of in grad school, demonstrating cytometry to past presidents Bush and Obama, and the importance of developing pipelines to prevent copy paste errors. All this and more coming up in this episode. Hi. I'm Peter O'Toole, and welcome to this episode of Flowstar. Today, I'm joined by Mario Rodera from NIH still. Yes.
Mario Rodera:Yep.
Peter O'Toole:I do you know what? It's a real honor to meet with you. I reflected back to when I started my flow cytometry career, and there were for me, personally, there were three big names in flow cytometry. There was Howard Shapiro, Paul Robinson, and yourself. And I've been so fortunate to meet all of you, and to actually get you to record today is a real honor. So thank you for agreeing to today, Mario.
Mario Rodera:Oh, it's my pleasure.
Peter O'Toole:So just to give you an idea of how important Mario is, if you haven't met Mario, I've been looking you have you've actually met Barack Obama, haven't you?
Mario Rodera:Yes. And George Bush.
Peter O'Toole:And George Bush?
Mario Rodera:Yeah.
Peter O'Toole:This is huge.
Mario Rodera:I got to show them how pulsatile works. In fact, with Brock, we had the LSR two open up so he could look in and see the lasers and the pads. And I had this nice display where we had six different tubes of quantum dots lined up. So if you hold it to the laser, it looks like the laser changes color as it goes through because they emit different different. Oh,
Peter O'Toole:that's super smart. Just because, yeah, keep them engaged. And even if it's not true science per se, it shows and gets them excited, I guess.
Mario Rodera:Yes. And, actually, asked some very pertinent questions. He was pretty impressive. I was impressed by him quite a bit.
Peter O'Toole:How long did you get with him?
Mario Rodera:About five minutes.
Peter O'Toole:Still, I'll take my five minutes of fame at that point.
Mario Rodera:And then I got to ride in the motorcade over to a different part of the other age where he had where he made a major speech, and that that was kind of fun too.
Peter O'Toole:That that's gotta be one of your highlights in your career, hasn't it?
Mario Rodera:Yeah.
Peter O'Toole:That that's pretty special. And it also shows you not just your importance, but the importance of flow cytometry, which is obviously what you're famous for worldwide, is the place cytometry side of things. What got you into flow cytometry to start with?
Mario Rodera:Well, I have to blame Bob Murphy, my PhD adviser at Carnegie Mell. I went to Carnegie Mell as a for my PhD, and I turned his lab. And he used to look at endocytosis. And so I started working with him on that aspect. And I remember for my PhD thesis proposal defense, which you give after one year, I actually proposed to do a seven color experiment, which was absolutely unheard of. And by the end of my PhD career, I was doing two or three colors, so I was a little bit ambitious, but it set me on the path.
Peter O'Toole:I so just just just for ease, this has got to be the late eighties?
Mario Rodera:No. Nineteen eighty four.
Peter O'Toole:Nineteen '80 '4 and wanted to do seven color flow cytometry.
Mario Rodera:Yeah.
Peter O'Toole:And I think we had to wait, oh, to the start of the naughties?
Mario Rodera:No. We were doing nine colour in nine five in 1998 or so.
Peter O'Toole:That's I wasn't far off. I wasn't far off. And I guess that that's, you know, that's how I know your reputation is color. The number of colors that you can actually apply and do it sensibly. Yep.
Peter O'Toole:How many, world records for the number of colors on a flow cytometer? How many times have you broken that personally in your lab?
Mario Rodera:Oh, probably about 18 or so. But the one I'm most proud of is we had a student in the lab who is 22 years old and planned and implemented a 23 color experiment. That was the first time anyone had ever done more colors than their age.
Peter O'Toole:That that's super cool, isn't it? And I guess that's gonna be more and more common now as the number of colors you can do by face cytometry has increased. I we will come back to multicolors in a bit. But you got into phase cytometry through your PhD and what you want to do. But if I take you back to when you were 10, 11, 12 years of age, can you remember what the first job was that you ever wanted to do?
Mario Rodera:I always knew I'd be a scientist. My father is a physicist. He's now 95 and still still writing physics articles. My brother who is 10 years old went into neurobiology initially. And so I suspected I would always be a scientist at one level or another.
Peter O'Toole:Oh, wow. I've I've got to ask. What line of physics was your dad or is your dad still in?
Mario Rodera:Space physics.
Peter O'Toole:Space physics?
Mario Rodera:And and yeah. Near Earth physics.
Peter O'Toole:So you never want to be an astronaut?
Mario Rodera:Of course. In fact, you know, the there's a group down in, where are they? That's a guard that does flow cytometry for space physics for for the astronauts. And I always often thought I would go and, you know, work their site I'd be their flow drafting if they needed someone to say this.
Peter O'Toole:Well, come on. With with the way things get going in space travel, it's not beyond it yet, is it?
Mario Rodera:Not yet. No.
Peter O'Toole:Can I can always hope? So, okay, so so your dad was a physicist. Your brother who's eight years older went into neurobiology, but what was your what was your first degree in?
Mario Rodera:Chemistry. My father convinced me that I should get a degree in a hard science, not in a soft science. And so I decided to go with chemistry because I was basically a pyromaniac. And I thought chemistry would be a good way to learn how to make explosives and things like that. But then I kind of lost interest in chemistry when I saw my I took my first genetics course in as a freshman in college, and I fell in love with biology and genetics. And I always thought to be a gene jockey when I went to graduate school.
Peter O'Toole:So so what changed? Just just through your PhD that changed?
Mario Rodera:Yeah. I think during and seeing the being able to do technology development, I've always been somewhat good at technology, and the gene jockies didn't need any technology development. They just needed creative people who could do biology, and that's not me. So working in, I got exposed to developing technologies, both the hardware and the software based. I also wrote acquisition packages back then in the early eighties that that BB gave away with their instruments. And so that kinda got me hooked. And then from the biology side of it, both I thought it was heavily used in immunology. So just through the technology, I got exposed to immunology, which I love. That is my that's my love. And so I went to Len's Lab as a postdoc to immunology and cytometry, Len Herzenberg, and the rest is basically history.
Peter O'Toole:What was Len like to work for?
Mario Rodera:Len was fantastic. I admire him so much. He he always had the philosophy that the science belong to the people because the people paid for it. So he had the initial group of the initial patent holders on the flow cytometer. He asked that they sign over their rights and money to the lab, and so he was able to fund the lab quite well and and always felt that the science was owned by the masses of people who paid for it.
Peter O'Toole:And what was if I take you back to the start, what was the first flow cytometer you used?
Mario Rodera:That in Bob Lab, it was a 4 FACS440. That was the first order, and we had we had a three color analyzer. No. That was not we didn't use that. But then the four forty, fax four forty, which is a fax four based machine. And then when I went to Len's, we actually had a fax two, which became our first eleven color machine as we saw different detectors and and other products to it. But that was a fax two that's now in the Smithsonian.
Peter O'Toole:Oh, wow. Have have you been have you actually seen it in the Smithsonian?
Mario Rodera:No.
Peter O'Toole:No? Are you tempted to go and see it?
Mario Rodera:Yeah. I think it's not you have to wait until it's on display. Every so often, they'll bring it out on some sort of special display. So right now, it's just in a warehouse. It looks like Raiders of the Lost Ark, that last scene.
Peter O'Toole:Well, that would be cool, though, wouldn't it? Yeah. We should look at an anniversary date and try and persuade them to celebrate the anniversary and bring it out on display.
Mario Rodera:I should have thought about four or five years ago because I'm pretty sure those those are concocted five years in advance.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah.
Mario Rodera:But, yeah, that would've been fun.
Peter O'Toole:And so that was your first cytometer. Do you have a favorite cytometer that you've ever used?
Mario Rodera:I think the LSR two was my favorite just because it was so easy to use, and it was very it was the first cytometer we had where we had really good resolution of different colors and so on. And it was also digital. So I think the the different aspects of it made it my favorite. Plus, you know, I'm basically responsible for the LSR two in b b because I went to them and told them they had to build this for me. And they did a market analysis and said they would do it if they could because they thought they would sell 50 of them in the next few years, and they end up selling 2,000.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. The market's exploded, though, didn't it, for Flow? It has. And it's just growing, isn't it?
Mario Rodera:Yep.
Peter O'Toole:Just just incredible. So I've gotta ask you. Have you ever had a MoFlow?
Mario Rodera:Yeah. Well, we had a our original cytometer in Len's lab, which was a FACS two, had the multiple electronics because the electronics is the we could do high speed sorting, and we could do digital acquisition and so on.
Peter O'Toole:Okay. I've gotta say that that for me.
Mario Rodera:So it's a it's a MoFlow attached on top of a fax two bench.
Peter O'Toole:Just a different era. I miss the MoFlo.
Mario Rodera:Yeah.
Peter O'Toole:I do miss it. So you mentioned earlier about the software side, and you were actually playing with the software for the analysis because, obviously, the analysis old school was very literally analog, very analog. So it's not everyone who is into actually computer programming and helping with the analysis and the setting of the software side of it. Why why get into that side of it? You know, you could just be a user asking for more colors. Why did you feel compelled to help and address that side, the analysis side? I didn't feel compelled. For me, it's just easy. Wiring software for me is easy, and I have to be very careful because it's distracting enough that if I have a hard problem in biology and I don't wanna deal to us, they're writing code. And coding is very it's addictive for me because it's it's easy, and you can see right away the the benefit that you're having. But, initially, I was doing it primarily because we needed to be able as we moved on beyond three and four hours, we needed software that could do compensation, which did not really exist at that time. And
Mario Rodera:we needed to do it in an automated and high speed way, so that's why we initially started running FlowJo, and then ZAP was to have the ability to handle the datasets we were generating, which were beyond any software that existed at that point.
Peter O'Toole:And I I so now you've brought on to the the FlowJo because you were you are the founder or founder of FlowJo. And for those No.
Mario Rodera:No. No. No. Adam Preester we hired Adam Preester into Stanford because he was a a real coder, and he and I generated the first version that was commercialized.
Peter O'Toole:And for those listening, if you don't know what FlowJo is, FlowJo is one of the leading analytical software programs. You'll find this in hospitals. You'll find this in almost every university that's out there. It is absolutely fundamental and fundamentally important. And the software itself, I don't know if you've ever reflected on this. The amount of fundamental research that FlowJo has enabled, it is uncountable. It's huge. Yeah. And that's because of yourself.
Mario Rodera:Well, someone would have to do it, but, yeah, I happen to be fortunate enough to be in a position where I could do it and did do it. But I do think I do remember going to talks in the mid nineties and later on in the two thousands and so on where I'd see talks on people giving talks, and they show a plot that I knew was FlowJo because they're it's like your child. If you have twins, as a parent, you can tell them apart, but other people may not be able to. So I could always tell a plot that comes from FlowDrop versus a plot that comes from somewhere else. And I would see it more and more used and presented, and I thought, well, this is something that I think is gonna be big.
Peter O'Toole:Is yeah. Alright. And and he's still huge.
Mario Rodera:I think Still. Right.
Peter O'Toole:Still the leading program, I believe, in market. I've gotta be careful. As part of this series, I'm doing Dave Novo as well. Obviously, who does the the the leading rival software arguably? But it's not about the software, is it? It's about the history of it and just the success. And what was it like? So you started a company for FlowJo. How big a step was that? Because that's, again, a very different step from just being in academia doing research. Now having a spin out
Mario Rodera:So that was primarily Adam, the cofounder of FlowJo. He he had a company that he used to sell very niche software from, and so that was TreeStar Incorporated or TreeStar LLC. So we we licensed the the software technology from Stanford who owned it at the time and then developed it more and commercialized it and started selling it through the portal, basically. So Adam really took care of the business and of the of the software for a lot for twenty years.
Peter O'Toole:Did it take a lot of your time, though? Because there's there's one thing having software that works in your hands for your lab. There's another thing once it becomes a commercial product that the the user interface has to be glossier, more user friendly. Were you involved in a lot of that, or was that part of then part of Adam's side and his team?
Mario Rodera:I was involved somewhat. In general, I'm not a user interface kind of guy as you correctly pointed out because that requires a lot of patience and a lot of, knowledge. So I did more of the the algorithms and the basic you know, I needed something so I would code it and and and implement it back in Stanford. I did a lot of that. So, yeah, it consumed a lot of time, but it also saves a lot of time as a consequence. So although it would take me an hour or two to write a new algorithm or or a new interface or so, it would save me that time in spades down the road as I did that as I use it over and over in the lab as well.
Peter O'Toole:I it's fascinating listening to you, actually. I have a data science team, at York, and they're always telling me that it's it's vital for them to develop the pipelines to do the analysis. It's quicker to do that than to to do grunt grunt through the data analysis itself. Yeah. And, you know, what you're saying perfectly chimes with what they're telling me all the time that, no. No. No. Better to do the pipeline, get the coding, and let it do it for you because then it can just
Mario Rodera:I continued at an age where I have my own lab. I would write pipelines in in different softwares like the JMP based software, JSL, which is jump a program that's put up by SAS. I would write pipelines in there to assist with people, but to do their analysis or to automate their analysis. I've always felt that you don't wanna do you need to have automated analysis so you can always start from the raw data at the beginning no matter how as you add more and more data to it. You always reanalyze the pipe use the pipeline from the beginning so that you don't make copy paste errors. One of the biggest problems in this in science right now is too much of it is done with copy paste. And so you get halfway down an analysis scheme, and you realize you did something wrong, and then you have to go back and do it again. So that that's been my main effort in not main, but that's probably one of my big efforts in the in the lab I run is to help them with the pipelines because I know how to write those.
Peter O'Toole:So I you know, I've not thought about this until just how do you so the cytometers themselves are now so user friendly that you don't have to be very expert at all to be able to operate the analyzers also. They they are super use they've made them super good for immunologists, other biologists, life scientists to use. The likes of Flowjo make it really easy to analyze the data. Do you think there's ever a concern that people are so disengaged with what they're doing and they just get putting tubes on the machine and spitting out data analysis at the end that they may misinterpret or design their experiments badly? Do you think we're getting more of that because they're less techy and less thinking about what's really going on.
Mario Rodera:I think it's a real problem. I think it's always been a problem, and there's no easy solution. I mean, to me, the solution is not to make sure the users know how to do the how to do all those things or how the instrument works. The solution is to embed the people who are in the in the lab so that they can participate in the design and implementation of the experiments. But it means you always have to have people who who sit on the fence of technology and biology. You need to have people who understand both sides and can translate. They don't necessarily have to be experts at either one, but they have to be able to translate. And that's something I've always been proud to be able to do is to sit on that fence and and talk to the biologist and say, what do you need and translate that to the. So a lot of the time people will say, oh, I need to be able to do this. I usually will call to me and say, I need to do this. Well, no. Not quite true. You don't need to do this, but you need to do that, which is very similar. And then if you implement that, then it helps them do whatever they wanted to do. And the reason is because users don't necessarily know how to color what the appropriate pipeline impact is. And then if you have people that that will happen to able to decide where you have software engineers who'll say, oh, the users who want to do this, And I'll sit there and go, no. That's not really what they want to do. They wanna do that, and you should cut cut it this way. So it's you need to have people who are sitting on that fence who know both the technology and the biology who get embedded in the in the biologists in in terms of experiment setup and implementation and so on. And that's why that's why Johnny Moore and I wrote our article about shared resource laboratories back in 02/2003 or '4 or so when we put forward that whole that whole concept that it's not, just a core laboratory or it's a shared resource laboratory. And the idea of calling it shared resource was to convey the fact that you want to share the the design and share the knowledge of the technology with the biologist so that you get the best of both worlds.
Peter O'Toole:In shared resource, Cyto I'm very lucky. We got a shared resource facility, and I've got an excellent team that sits on that fence and interface between the two and a very integrated I would say the users are more dependent on the technical staff than they are on the instruments. You know, the way the system works now is they are almost dependent on them to just help design their experiments. There's a lot of teaching, lots of training. We have lots of external courses to help train, but when it comes to the complicated stuff, they still heavily lean on the team that we have. And that is the perfect shape.
Mario Rodera:It's great you can provide that. But my fear is that business has become so simple and and inexpensive that people can buy them for their own laboratory and never get the the training or or assistance that they really need.
Peter O'Toole:Do you think, this is an if you think about it, this is a blessing of financially challenging times in that it makes it harder even though the instruments are getting cheaper. So I'm sorry for all the manufacturers out there making cheaper ones. The the running costs are not insignificant. The service contract costs of these instruments, it becomes a burden to individual labs. And that actually so because of that burden, it's encouraging more and more not to put them in their own labs, but to put them in a shared resource. And there are no other flow cytometers at York but in the facility, and there's five analyzers, I think, three sorters, all just in and and no one would want I don't think any of the users would want their own because they've got five at their disposal. So if one was to break, there's another four. They can have multiple people on them at the same time. It's very much a cultural persuasion to explain the benefits of those shared resources and are more than just the cost.
Mario Rodera:I think too many people view or used to view photosynthetic as a center of each. You come with your samples, you put them in, you press a few buttons, and you come out with your cells at the bottom and the and the fluid at the top. And that's you know, for for flow, it's a far more complex technology that requires a lot more thinking and and processing and understanding the impact of every step on your on your experiment and and so on, optimizing the the panels and and using reagents. I mean, it's amazing how people still don't know what reagent titration is about and and what the antibody binding can what mechanism can tell us about binding. And so those are all important facets of a flow cytometer experiment, and yet they're still not widely understood.
Peter O'Toole:I've always thought remember the first, without naming any names or anything else, but the first user friendly cell sorters. And they got quite a bad reputation early on. And actually, personally, I think it was less the cytometer's performance, more the fact that users were now trying to sort without understanding how to even gate strategically for cell sorting.
Mario Rodera:Well, that's you know, I told the manufacturers this when they came out with the instruments. They said this instrument won't need a core to do it. You could do it in your own. I said that's a mistake because then if you make it if you that's how you advertise it, then people will just generate garbage data and won't and they'll complain about your instrument, and then people you'll get a bad reputation. I said, you don't do it that way. You gotta put it put it in cores. But, you know, people will have the money. They're willing to buy it for their own lab, and then they complain about why it didn't work.
Peter O'Toole:And it it is and and it really was the case, I think.
Mario Rodera:Yeah. I mean, I remember in the in the February when we were doing 18 color experiments and so on, postdocs would come to my lab because they wanted to do these experiments, and they said, I wanna do I wanna do an 18 color experiment. And this is, you know, this is the panel I want to use. And I just let them go, and they come back to me and say, this didn't work at all. This is complete crap. And I said, no. The the problem is that you have you have to build it up step by step. And then we go back and build it up step by step, and it'll work. It takes six months, but it would work eventually. And the problem was that they simply you know, they and I what I thought about was this is what goes on in eighty percent of the lives worldwide where people try an AT and and it doesn't work, and they say this is crap. It'll never work.
Peter O'Toole:I I'm going to, I try not to get too technical, but I have to ask this question from what we just from this this line of tools. Do you think spectral analysis made that easier or harder?
Mario Rodera:It makes it easier because spectral is much more forgiving for, for the dye and and reagent choice. And so because it has higher resolution. So I think special in the end will will be I mean, that was always where the technology was going. And I remember when the first exposure I had was from Los Alamos where they did a lot of spectromachine back in the, I think, eighties. And I thought this is very cool, but they didn't have the computer chip power to to to do it in a reasonable way. So I had to wait until the late two thousands and tens, I think, before they started becoming feasible. But, yeah, Spectrum will make it easier, but I worry then that there might be other things that fall by the wayside because people won't they won't qualify their panels quite as well as they used to because, you know, they they try a 12 pound panel. It works, and that's enough for them. But you can get it so much better.
Peter O'Toole:What do you think the maximum number of colors will be? Do think there's a maximum number that we can ever use?
Mario Rodera:I think so. I mean, it depends on the on the dyes. I mean, given technology, it it all depends on how wide the dye relation is. Right?
Peter O'Toole:Yeah.
Mario Rodera:And due to the right now are about forty, fifty nanometers wide. So it's a matter of digging up the emission spectrum for each excitation laser. So right now, we're at seven by seven lasers by maybe eight colors each, so 56 is probably a maximum layer. But, you know, somebody somebody may come up with a new technology where the emission spectrum is only one nanometer.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah.
Mario Rodera:Right now, that's that's the entire future of flow cytometers is to narrow the the emission spectrum. Nothing else.
Peter O'Toole:Lanthanides do that. So lanthanides got really narrow missions. You just need good lanthanide chemists.
Mario Rodera:And you don't have very many of them?
Peter O'Toole:Don't need a lot. Really? A probe is tiny. Tell us, who's been your inspirations in your career?
Mario Rodera:Well, of course, initially, it was my father because he guided my you know, where I should go. But I would say then it was primarily Bob Murphy who introduced me to flow cytometry and the technology and so on. And then Lennon Lee Herzenberg, where really they taught me how to run a lab and how to do science really and how to present it to the outside world. I mean, there's there's things that people forget about. You have to know the design experiments and implement them, but you have to be able to publish them and talk about them in ways that people will understand and appreciate. And that's something that Leslie taught me very well. And I think I've I've been fortunate to be able to give seminars all over the world to many different people who are interested in the technology and hone that skill, but there's nothing we'd be able to present.
Peter O'Toole:Of of all the places you travel to, is there a favorite place?
Mario Rodera:No. I've been fortunate that I've been able to travel widely, and I can't say that there is a favorite place. What about the best time in your career, when would you say was the Golden time in your career, if you could relive a period of your career when would it be , what stage
Mario Rodera:Well, that is interesting because there's two different answers. In the flow world, it would probably be in the February, early '2 thousands because that's when we're doing development at a very high rate of the colors, the multicolor technology. In terms of my career, it's really been the last few years as I transitioned away from doing flow cytometry. And I've been tasked with doing a lot more medical parameters to different viruses, and I have groups that are doing Nipah virus, norovirus, alfavirus, and SIV, HIV, and TB. I have people doing those in my lab, and we've been able to publish a lot of high impact papers on that on those topics in the last two or three years.
Mario Rodera:So in the post pandemic world, there's been less technology development, more biology development.
Peter O'Toole:And so best times, you had two. What about the most challenging or difficult times?
Mario Rodera:I think that for me is pretty easy. That's why I was in in early in graduate school and also in undergraduate. And that is primarily because no one ever told me what was expected of me. So, for example, in graduate school, when I went to defend my thesis proposal, the faculty, I became with the with the intent of kicking me out because I was viewed as someone who was lackadaisical and not very hardworking and so on. But I did a very good job, obviously, and and, you know, hit a home run on my proposal defense, so they let me stay. And I got my PhD, and then and then my career went on. But I would say that those the last few years as an undergraduate and first year as a as a graduate student, I was not well prepared. I didn't know exactly what I should be doing. And they were difficult years in the sense that I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know how I was gonna get out of it. And that I have to give Bob Murphy a lot of credit for because he kinda pulled me along and and told taught me what work ethic was and how to get it done, and that helped a lot.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. That that that's really it's cool to hear that the support you had, so your inspirations, and just how much support you had off your inspirations as well. During those difficult times or even later in your career when there's always bad days at work. When you get home, what do you do to relax? What are your hobbies?
Mario Rodera:You know, my hobby was always science. I worked a lot as a as a in my postdoc and and as an early career. I worked at home. I only worked a lot, and that was not so I didn't have a whole lot of hobbies. I did do a lot of running. I jumped into a runner when I was in as a postdoc at Stanford and used to run quite a bit. And then when my son became was born in twenty six years ago, and he's done ultra distance runner, and he does a lot of marathons, and he's done some hundred mile races. And so it's kinda rubbed off on him.
Peter O'Toole:I've got to ask. What was his hundred how how fast can he do 100 miles?
Mario Rodera:He he did it a couple thousand. He did it in twenty eight hours. He did Leadville, which is at ten it starts at 10,000 feet. All the sudden goes off from there. Oh. Goes up to 12,000 and then goes down, and he has to turn around and go back up and down. So it's it's quite the the hundred mile race.
Peter O'Toole:Actually, sounds really cool. I've done 100 miler.
Mario Rodera:Yeah.
Peter O'Toole:So and then I would love to do it again, but my running partner got so injured. He refuses to do it. I said, oh, come on. Come on. You can do it well, but no. And my family aren't that way geared to it.
Mario Rodera:It requires a lot of dedication. That's right.
Peter O'Toole:But it's lovely. It's lovely. So what what was your distance when you were running?
Mario Rodera:Primarily about 10 k. I've done a marathon, and I was training to do another one, but my running career ended about fifteen years ago. And so but that case were primarily my distance, and I do that in about forty minutes. That was a pretty good case.
Peter O'Toole:But that's that's good time?
Mario Rodera:Not spectacular, but, you know, that's good.
Peter O'Toole:I haven't done that for a long time. Forty minutes. I still struggle to get down below the 42 these days. Do you miss it?
Mario Rodera:Yes. I do.
Peter O'Toole:And do you not find another hobby to replace it or displace some of
Mario Rodera:Yeah. I do it now. I do hiking and swimming. You know, as the body gets older, you try to be a little bit less harsh on it.
Peter O'Toole:I could I could you know, you keep yourself fit. So it's good I try to. Good hiking, clearly, it's two things. What about cooking at home? Do you cook?
Mario Rodera:Not much. I'm fortunate to have a partner who's a very good cook, and so, you know, there's no reason for me to do it, but I taste.
Peter O'Toole:On that note, let's hit some quick fire questions.
Mario Rodera:Okay.
Peter O'Toole:Are you an early bird or a night owl?
Mario Rodera:Early bird. Absolutely.
Peter O'Toole:PC or Mac?
Mario Rodera:Mac. I converted the entire VRC to Mac, which I'm very proud of, the Vaccine Research Center, because primarily because of but also because of other things. I'm slowly back. I'm fully
Peter O'Toole:That's because Flowjo used to be Mac only, didn't it? And then
Mario Rodera:Exactly.
Peter O'Toole:Okay. McDonald's or Burger King?
Mario Rodera:McDonald's. Their fries are much better.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. They really are, aren't they?
Mario Rodera:Yes. They are.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. Tea or coffee?
Mario Rodera:Oh, tea. Oh. I don't understand coffee. I'm a beer supertaster, so I don't drink coffee and I don't drink beer, so I drink tea and wine. I feel like a left hander in the beverage world.
Peter O'Toole:I love that analogy. That's really cool. Chocolate or cheese?
Mario Rodera:You know, I'll come back to that in a sec, but in a sec. But I remember my first ISAC meeting was actually in Cambridge in 1986 or '7 or so. And I thought, finally, I'm gonna go to Cambridge, the home of the tea drinkers. I'll able to have tea easily enough. And so the very first breakfast, we sat down in a big hall there, and they were serving coffee. I said, can I get some tea? And I had to go in the back room and get some tea for me. And it's just because it was so the meeting with by by non non British people is primarily coffee, but I thought I was so disappointed by the fact that I was being served coffee in my first trip to Britain as a scientist.
Peter O'Toole:That's brilliant. Chocolate or cheese? Okay. I'll give you e. What what's your flavor?
Mario Rodera:Cheese in general. I love cheese, so but I like chocolate too. But cheese, I think, is a little bit more interesting in the long run.
Peter O'Toole:Okay. What's your favorite food? If you could be served any food, what would you like to eat?
Mario Rodera:Pizza.
Peter O'Toole:Oh, okay. You can't just stop at pizza. What topping?
Mario Rodera:Oh, well, that would be my often favorite pizza is sausage and green pepper.
Peter O'Toole:Okay. Definitely a pepper pepper pepperoni. Pepperoni fan definitely. Pepperoni.
Mario Rodera:I'm probably pepperoni a bit salty. So
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. I like the smokiness. If you get a nice smoky pepperoni Yeah.
Mario Rodera:That if you get if you that's the standard pepperoni that all the American pizza chains use, but if you get good pepperoni, then absolutely.
Peter O'Toole:That that's a good choice for a favorite food. And what about your least favorite food? What is your food nightmare?
Mario Rodera:You know, I grew up in a my mother was German, and so I grew up not allowed to have unfavored foods. But, primarily, the things I would eat are are the the really bitter foods like brussels sprouts. It's about the only food stuff that I will not eat.
Peter O'Toole:That well, that that that that there goes a classic Christmas British dinner that always has brussels sprouts on the plate.
Mario Rodera:Well, I have to say I've had brussels sprouts that were very good and tolerable, but they have to be very caramelized.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah.
Mario Rodera:They to be cooked and caramelized very heavily, and then and then they're they're tolerable for me, and I kinda like them.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. Chopped up nicely fried, caramelized. Yeah. Okay. Get it?
Peter O'Toole:Put fried. Do you prefer to eat in or eat out?
Mario Rodera:I always prefer to eat in. It's a good food.
Peter O'Toole:That you're lucky you said that because you already said it's your wife that cooks. And if you'd have said eat out, she'd have gotten mad at you for saying that.
Mario Rodera:No. But for example, when I when I invite myself over to my boss and his wife are very good friends of mine, I I always prefer to eat in because they're both very good cooks.
Peter O'Toole:Being as you don't do much cooking, do you do the cleaning?
Mario Rodera:Of course. That's only fair.
Peter O'Toole:I I agree. That's why I prefer to cook because I can't stand cleaning. TV or book?
Mario Rodera:Nowadays, it's TV. I haven't heard of book in years.
Peter O'Toole:Okay. And do you watch do you watch any trashy TV?
Mario Rodera:You mean what's my
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. What's your TV sin?
Mario Rodera:Not really. The only the only thing I do, I tend to overwatch the reruns of of old shows like friends and how I met your mother and so on.
Peter O'Toole:Okay.
Mario Rodera:But I do like to stream the latest series on Apple TV or so on Netflix.
Peter O'Toole:And what about your favorite film? Favorite movie?
Mario Rodera:There are so many. It depends on what what choice, but being there with Peter what's his name? It's it's based on a novel by Jersey Kaczynski. It's one of my favorite movies called Being There.
Peter O'Toole:Okay.
Mario Rodera:Came out in the mid eighties. It's a fabulous movie. It's about, basically I thought it used to predict the rise of George Bush junior. But in fact, now I think it's the rise of Trump that was predicted by that.
Peter O'Toole:That that could be worth a worth a watch, actually. And I think anyone who's watching or listening to this may now be scrambling to watch it because it sounds fascinating. Are you a Star Wars or Star Trek fan?
Mario Rodera:Both.
Peter O'Toole:If you had to choose one?
Mario Rodera:Star Wars.
Peter O'Toole:Oh, yeah. I think majority. And what about favorite Christmas movie?
Mario Rodera:I'm not a fan of the holiday movies, but probably else.
Peter O'Toole:Okay. That's quite popular too. Spectral or compensation?
Mario Rodera:Same thing.
Peter O'Toole:Come on. One's additive. One's subtractive.
Mario Rodera:No. No. It's exactly the same math.
Peter O'Toole:I we'll argue that one is a different time. But how can I argue it with you? Okay. So you
Mario Rodera:can special well, specialized is the way that's the future and how you have to do it. And the the data is much you get much better resolution than spectral, but there's really no difference between spectral and compensation. Mathematically, the equivalent.
Peter O'Toole:Fluorochromes or metal tags?
Mario Rodera:Oh, very definitely fluorochromes. You can't sort with metal tags. And that was that was was was some funny. He said you'll never get any cells. We can't do anything with them if you tag the metals and and blend them up in a 4,000 degree oven.
Peter O'Toole:What's your favorite music?
Mario Rodera:Eighties.
Peter O'Toole:Eighties? Okay. And what's your favorite color?
Mario Rodera:Purple.
Peter O'Toole:Of all the people, I thought you might say PE or FITC or Rhodamine. No. Purple.
Mario Rodera:I can give you the waveguide if you want.
Peter O'Toole:Sorry?
Mario Rodera:I can give you the wave length.
Peter O'Toole:Oh, go on. What's your favorite wave length?
Mario Rodera:Maybe about four seventy.
Peter O'Toole:I that's a really good quote. I really like that that. You gotta get a t shirt made before seventy on it. Why 470?
Mario Rodera:I don't know. Why buying anything. I I was gonna I sous vide a lot when for for cooking meat, And so I I know the temperatures that I want different meats that that I want with my sous vide. And I went to a restaurant that very proudly said, we sous vide all our meats. And they said, well, what temperature do want? I gave him a I said one thirty one. He said, I don't know what that is. He said, do want me rare or rare? I said, oh, you you advertise that you can you do it to whatever temperature I want. And so, you know, this is kind of disappointing to me that they advertise it as you could name the temperature, but didn't expect people to actually name the temperature.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. I and I guess I well, you are you said what wavelength, so I I guess I did walk you into that. Do you have any pet hates? Things you really dislike, people's habits you dislike? Or what do you find quite where is your tolerance quite low on?
Mario Rodera:Too many to list.
Peter O'Toole:Sorry?
Mario Rodera:Too many to list. My my primary pet peeve is people who don't try. You know, it's not it's not making a mistake or it's not, you know, doing doing something wrong. It's when you haven't even tried.
Peter O'Toole:So for all your lab that are listening to this back, there you are. Make sure you're putting in an effort because otherwise, you're not gonna be happy with them. Overall, your career, do you have any regrets?
Mario Rodera:No.
Peter O'Toole:No?
Mario Rodera:No. I can't. I've been very, very fortunate throughout my career in the choices I ended up with. Mhmm. And, I can't say that it would could have trust me better or differently.
Peter O'Toole:And if you could do any job for a day or a week, not science, what job would you choose to do?
Mario Rodera:That's a great question. Imagine being president of The United States to be a part of feeling you've got to do it for one day.
Peter O'Toole:Mhmm. As I say, you kinda you kinda need it for a week, don't you, to get a proper flavor and then and then and then cut and run?
Mario Rodera:Yeah. Exactly.
Peter O'Toole:That's cool. Ah, so if you were president for a day or a week, what would you do?
Mario Rodera:Oh, that's easy. I've got the defense spending in half, and I'd apply it to NIH budget and to science.
Peter O'Toole:I I I like the the dedication to science itself. What is a what do you think has given you most reward at work? Has it been the the founding of FlowJo and just how many people have used it? Is it the all the different multicolor panels that people have picked up and run with and be pushing the limits of multicolor flow cytometry, or has it been your latest developments in looking at the disease and going So what I'm thinking
Mario Rodera:of is I enable science, and that's been my greatest pleasure and honor is to be able to enable science at many different levels, level of technology, at the level of biology, at the training people. And, really, you know, there are a couple of small things that gave me great joy. It's like when somebody asks a question on the Purdue list about compensation, and somebody else answers it absolutely correctly. And that is in great joy now that it's you know, I've taught people about compensation or spell or correction, whatever you wanna call it. And there's enough people out there that know how to teach it to other people now.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. I I think
Mario Rodera:But in fact, that's why I rarely respond on the Purdue list. I used to respond all the time. But now that other people respond, and I think that's really my joy is that the that the I think the next generation has taken up the harness and and taken up the the efforts, and they're doing a great great job of it.
Peter O'Toole:I do see you reply sometimes still. So what triggers
Mario Rodera:Mostly pithy, and I try to inject a little humor. Which some people don't find very humorous, but my my sense of humor can be very exciting.
Peter O'Toole:That's a I think a wise head as well and be knowing how to use it. And, actually, by not by not commenting, you're letting other people build up their reputations.
Mario Rodera:Exactly. Seeing my trainees, you know, become successful on their own, right, has been a great journey too. Raising a child that goes and does something great.
Peter O'Toole:Any thoughts on social media?
Mario Rodera:Yeah. It's the I mean, it's it's the it's really coming, and it's absolutely necessary. The problem is identifying what is the truthiness of the of the social media is what's at stake here. Right? And that's a real problem, but nobody knows. There's so much social media that all that a lot of it is just not correct that you're saturate. I hope people will finally get to the point where they stop relying on social media for their input, but I suspect that it'll always be there'll always be too many people that get their information from Twitter or or whatever.
Peter O'Toole:There's a lot of good science on social media. Whichever platform that you're looking at, whether it be LinkedIn or Twitter or Blue Sky or whichever one, I think there's some good scientific communities out there. I noticed I I looked at you on social media, and I found two Mario's on Twitter. One which I think is genuinely you, another one that is at facts god.
Mario Rodera:That's probably me too.
Peter O'Toole:That's brilliant. I saw that. I thought so wanted to have loads of activities instead of facts god. And then I saw the other one that has more activity, which is at Mario Roader. But that that was a brilliant name, and I thought that was a beautiful as one
Mario Rodera:of the I found it and and registered it for myself so somebody else wouldn't get it.
Peter O'Toole:I I think it's one of the gods of glaze cytometry. It's a really good name. But but then you might have to share it with god one, god two, god three.
Mario Rodera:Exactly.
Peter O'Toole:A few of you that's out there. Before I finish, do you have any words of wisdom for any young scientists out there or even any older scientists out there?
Mario Rodera:Yeah. Share what you're doing. One of the things that Len taught me was to be very collaborative and to always talk about what you're doing. Don't withhold information and data. The science will proceed much more rapidly. Everyone is so intent on taking ownership or something so that everyone knows that they did it. And that's not really what science is about. Science is about sharing and doing it collaboratively, and you'll get recognized anyway. But I I remember being absolutely horrified because Glenn would give a talk sometimes, and he told he told everyone about the data I collected a week or two before, which which I thought was pretty hot data. And and now he's spilling out to the entire world. And I thought, oh, they're gonna run with it and take it away. And that never happened. But what did happen was that people wanted to start collaborating with Len or or been with me and wanted to work with me. And I've been extremely fortunate to have had a whole slew of very, very productive collaborations in my in my life. And if you look at my publication history, I have, like, 400 papers or so. And I would say a vast majority, probably 80% were collaborations that came out. Only about 20% are from my own lab, or only from my lab.
Peter O'Toole:But of those 400 publications, I think it's got a h index of over 100, I think. And if to those who don't know what that means, that means it is phenomenally high compared to almost all academics. To be over a hundred is a stellar performance. And I also noticed you in the Stanford University Invention Hall of Fame. Yeah. That's pretty impressive.
Mario Rodera:That's for science seven PE or science seven ABC, which made Stanford about 10,000,000 in royalties.
Peter O'Toole:Do you get some of those royalties yourself?
Mario Rodera:I did for a while.
Peter O'Toole:That's nice, isn't it? That that's super cool. And I have to ask one more question, which I nearly forgot. Your dad was a physicist. Your brother was a neurobiologist.
Peter O'Toole:You've gone to from biophysics into biology as well. What about your son?
Mario Rodera:About what? My son?
Peter O'Toole:Yeah.
Mario Rodera:He's defending his PhD in virology at Harvard in two weeks.
Peter O'Toole:Oh, wow. So he's also following the same footsteps?
Mario Rodera:Yeah. But he doesn't want to do science. He wants to go to a startup company or do business development. Okay. Yeah.
Peter O'Toole:But you have the company, so that's not so dissimilar. He's just Oh,
Mario Rodera:he just wants to start there. I did not start there.
Peter O'Toole:Yeah. Okay. But I guess he's seeing what you can do with the company as well through that.
Mario Rodera:Exactly.
Peter O'Toole:Oh, I I hope his defense goes well into
Mario Rodera:Oh, so too.
Peter O'Toole:And, Mario, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you to everyone who's listened or watched, and please, you can see Paul Robinson and some of the other people we've talked about, and you'll see Dave Novo up and coming if you're watching this as he's just released. But, Mario, on behalf of the community, thank you so much for being an inspiration to us. Thank you for helping lead and develop and giving us the tools that we are also dependent on and just take for granted in many cases. And I hope you realize just how big an impact you've had on the cytometry market, and thank you for taking your time to join me today.
Mario Rodera:It's been a real pleasure, and thank you for saying that. Those are very nice things.
Peter O'Toole:Thank you.
