Updated March 25th, 2020 to include more information from Cytek and OMIQ.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made a significant impact on our daily lives here in Chicago. Although our facility remains open for now (see facility current status here), we are keeping staff to a minimum and working from home whenever possible. The University has asked all labs to do the same, and I know that many researchers have had to transition to work from home. To assist with this transition, I’m compiling a list of tools for researchers, including a few special offers:

Special Offers on Applications:

• FlowJo is offering a free 30-day license for users who are not able to use their work computers and need to work from a different computer. More information here.
• FCS Express is offering free licenses to researchers working on SARS-CoV-2. Contact support@denovosoftware.com for more information. Those who already have a license should be able to log on to any computer with the software installed.
• GraphPad Prism always has a 30-day trial available. Currently this option will be available to everyone, even if the free trial has been previously downloaded.
• Cytek is offering a limited license for SpectroFlo for current users. It can be downloaded from the aurora user forum. Contact news@cytekbio.com for a forum account if you do not already have one.
• OMIQ is an online high-parameter analysis platform. Register here for a 21 day free trial. This tutorial will walk you through how to run tSNE, FlowSOM, create a heatmap, etc.

Not sure what to do at home? Educate yourself with some webinars and tutorials:

• FlowJo
  • Recorded Webinars
  • Tutorials
• FCS Express Webinars and Tutorials are free on YouTube. These can also be found with an FCS Express account at https://denovosoftware.com/full-access/.
• CYTO U contains a large database of courses, webinars, and conference archives from the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC). Normally these must be purchased or require an ISAC membership, but currently everything on CYTO U is free.
• Cytek has a few webinars and FCS Express tutorials specific to spectral cytometry. Cytek’s suggestions can be found on their website.

UChicago FTP Data Server Access Options:

• There are multiple ways to access the data server:
  • The easiest way is the website – you can always access this link at the top of our website: https://flowftp.uchicago.edu/Login
  • Another way to access the server is to use an FTP application. The benefit of accessing the server through an FTP application is that the file transfer will be much faster than the website. All of the analysis workstations in our lab have FileZilla installed, though there are many options available. (Note that FileZilla may try to install unwanted adware or spyware on Windows computers – pay attention during installation!)  To access our data server with FileZilla (or another FTP application), you’ll need to enter sftp://flowftp.uchicago.edu into the host field, and then use your normal server login username and password. The FileZilla quick guide can be found here.

UChicago VPN Access:

• You may need VPN access while working off campus for some UChicago resources (such as library databases like PubMed, local file shares, and remote desktop connections). UChicago personnel can follow this link to download the VPN application. You will need to login with your CNetID and password to access the VPN application. You should be able to access our data server without VPN using the above methods, but if you’re having trouble with another method of access you may want to try it.

Personal Data Storage:

• Everyone with a UChicago CNET ID has access to the UChicago box account. To claim your account, visit uchicago.box.com and log in with your CNetID and password. More information on box can be found here. Note that there is no storage limit, but individual files must be smaller than 15 GB.