Dr. Macklin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering (ISE) and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington. His lab develops open source simulation tools for multicellular systems biology, with a strong focus in cancer immunology. He has developed cross-platform, parallelized C open source codes for multi-substrate diffusion (BioFVM) and large-scale agent-based simulations in 3-D tissues (PhysiCell). These codes have been applied to diverse problems in cancer, nanotherapy, tissue engineering, immunology, cryobiology, synthetic systems, and microbiology. In recent work, he developed a new modeling language that drastically accelerates our ability build reproducible cancer simulations, along with web-based tools (PhysiCell Studio) to help scientists create, run, and explore these models. Using these tools, he works with biologists, modelers, and clinicians to develop and validate sophisticated 3D computer models of cancer, infectious diseases, and other multicellular systems, with a focus on cancer immunology. He also works to integrate simulation modeling, next-generation tissue cultures, and artificial intelligence to create digital twins for the future of personalized predictive cancer medicine.
PhysiCell is widely used by teams across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, South America, and elsewhere, and it was recently awarded the 2019 PLoS Computational Biology Research Prize for Public Impact. His lab also develops techniques to ease the use and increase the utility of agent-based simulations, including high-throughput investigations on HPC, cloud-hosted interactive simulators (e.g., https://nanohub.org/tools/pc4biorobots), and AI-driven model exploration. Dr. Macklin regularly involves undergraduate teams in his research program, using novel mentoring methodologies that are the focus of research in engineering and STEM education.
Prior to his time at IU, Dr. Macklin was an Assistant Professor Health Informatics at the University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston, a Lecturer of Mathematics at Dundee University in the United Kingdom, and an Assistant Professor of Research Medicine at the University of Southern California.
Macklin holds a B.A. in mathematics and German from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (minors in physics and economics), an M.S. in industrial and applied mathematics from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and a Ph.D. in computational and applied mathematics from the University of California-Irvine. He has served on numerous think tanks and working groups, such as the Breast Cancer Research Foundation's think tank on precision prevention, a scoping meeting on high-performance computing in cancer hosted jointly by the US Department of Energy and the US National Cancer Institute, and an upcoming joint meeting of the NIBIB, NCI, DOE, and FNLCR on the use of computational modeling to advance novel medical isotopes for radiotheranostics in cancer treatment. He serves as an editor for GigaScience (data-driven multicellular systems biology) and for ImmunoInformatics.
Dr. Macklin regularly shares his work with the public via X/Twitter (@MathCancer) and BlueSky (@mathcancer.bsky.social).
Recent news stories on Dr. Macklin’s work include:
- Critical cancer research technology receives boost under $4M NCI grant (Sep 23, 2024)
- IU researchers using high-performance computing to improve cancer treatment (March 29, 2024)
- IU scientists launching smartphone app to report bird behavior during eclipse (March 27, 2024)
- Macklin to receive 2023 John Jungck Prize for education excellence (Sep 18, 2022)
- Exploring The Intersection Of Cancer, Math, And The Microbiome With Paul Macklin and Alex Pearson [YouTube] (Nov 19, 2021)
- Macklin leading international effort to build SARS-CoV-2 tissue simulator (April 10, 2020)
- Macklin earns PLoS Computational Biology Research Prize for public impact (May 31, 2019)
- $3.1 million National Cancer Institute grant will support research on colorectal cancer at IU (Nov 18, 2018)
- BCRF Conversations: A Discussion with Drs. Daniele Gilkes and Paul Macklin [podcast] (Apr 5, 2017)