Frederic Preffer was born and raised in N.Y.C. and graduated from the Roswell Park Graduate Division of SUNY Buffalo in 1981. He then moved directly to the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) for his post-doctoral training where he accidentally ‘discovered’ the thrilling technology of flow cytometry.  There at MGH he was initially tutored in flow cytometry by Jerome Zawadski and Janis Giorgi, both of whom were students of Noel Warner. Fred is presently an Immunologist and Director of the Clinical and Research Flow Cytometry Laboratories at MGH and the Scientific Director of the Mass General Brigham Flow Cytometry Lab.  He is a Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and the Medical Director of the Clinical Immunopathology Unit at MGH, which along with the Clinical Flow Cytometry Laboratory performs diagnostic immunofluorescence microscopy, immunohistochemistry, electron microscopy, and ANCA testing.

Fred has been a member of the International Society for Analytic Cytology for many years as well as the International Clinical Cytometry Society and the European Society for Clinical Cell Analysis. He is the current Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Clinical Cytometry. Fred is a founding and continuing member of New England Cytometry (formerly The Boston Users Group) and is the head of that organization’s education and meeting organizing committee.

Fred is blessed with a wonderful family, great friends and his faithful dog Winston. He has fantastic co-workers in his labs at MGH. In his spare time, he plays in a Boston based Klezmer band and enjoys the meticulous study of Islay Whisky malts. With his two replacement-part hips, he appreciates trips to far-away places to take photographs of landscapes, birds, wild animals, not to mention his beautiful grandchildren.