Jeffrey Harvey (August 4, 2022)

Jeffrey Harvey BS (Hons) MD, (Univ Iowa) passed away on August 4, 2022.  Jeff did his MD at the University of Iowa medical school but worked his entire life in industry, most of it in the area of flow cytometry. He spent 8 years at BD in the early days of flow cytometry and cut his teeth on flow as the technology began to expand within the life sciences. Jeff set up one of the first CD4 monitoring programs with the Thai government during his time at BD. By 1990, Jeff was the product manager for clinical systems within BD. In 1992 jeff joined Cell Roboticis in Albuquerque as VP sales and marketing. In 1995 Jeff jointed BioRad and was a critical individual in the management of a ‘secret” project driven mostly by Gary Salzman at Los Alamos National Labs where an analyzer based heavily on Harald’ Steens dark field Bryte cytometer was designed to go into Humvee mobile labs that made their way into the Gulf war. The goal was the detection of biological warefare, and the system captured a couple of thousand cubic feet of air, then passed all the particles from the air into a liquid sheath , stained them and flowed them through the cytometer with the goal of identifying anything with nucleic acid in it.  

However, it was during Jeff’s time at Guava Technologies that his passion for taking flow out to resource limited countries became his personal mission. Jeff was heavily involved in the Cd4 working group from about 2000-2006 while he was VP at Guava. He spent countless weeks in Africa working with many groups to implement low cost, fast and accurate CD4 counting which was a major target for many companies and individuals at that time.  Jeff’s passion for making sure that flow cytometry reached those that needed it most drove him to spend an enormous time making sure this mission was successful. He also worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in India and South America in areas focused on low cost diagnostics. Jeff maintained his close association with cytometry in his work with Bay Biosciences for many years. Jeff was always interested in contributing to discussions in the field and was a significant contributor to the Purdue Cytometry Discussion list. His last message to the list was, tragically just the day prior to his untimely death. We will miss his well thought through arguments and his input on many issues in our field. Vale my friend.