James Glazier takes the research road less traveled, explores breakthrough opportunities others avoid, and the most recent reward comes from winning the newly created 2025 Klaus Schulten and Zaida Luthey-Schulten Computational Biophysics Lecture Award.

Glazier, a professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, will be honored by the Biophysical Society at its 69^th annual meeting in February in Los Angeles.

Recognition comes through his work over more than 30 years in developing algorithms, software and models that describe emergent multicellular organization of development, homeostasis and disease. Much of his current research centers on eyes and skin.

“My research world centers on cells and how tissues organize and fail,” he says. “I also build computational infrastructure to help others do research on these complex topics.

“Infrastructure development is essential, but often underappreciated. That’s why I appreciate recognition of this work from the Biophysical Society so much.”

Glazier helped develop the Cellular Potts Model, also called the Glazier-Graner-Hogeweg Model, which was originally used to explain experimental observations of spontaneous cell sorting in embryonic tissue cultures. That led to the development of CompuCell, a software framework for multi-scale simulation of the development of multicellular organisms. It is used by scientists world-wide for biological, medical and engineering research on cancer, immunology, developmental biology, the effects of toxicants in the environment and more.

“We use it to develop models of development and disease ourselves,” Glazier says, “but we try to enable people to do science, so we’re most proud when people we’ve never met decide to use our tools. That means our tools are providing a service to the world, and not just to ourselves.”

The CPM/GGH embodied on CompuCell3D has proved remarkably flexible. The Environmental Protection Agency uses CompuCell3D to assess developmental toxicants. Universities use it as an educational tool. Others have used it to understand the mechanism of cleft palate formation and blood vessel disruption in early embryos.

Beth Plale, chair of the Intelligent Systems Engineering department and Michael A and Laura Burns McRobbie Bicentennial Professor of Computer Science, praises Glazier’s difference-making research.

“Dr. Glazier demonstrates, through compuCell3D, the power of simulation to drive next generation advancements in digital twins of the human body,” she said.

Biophysics Society President Gabriela Popescu of the University of Buffalo calls Glazier’s research “pioneering.”

“His work exemplifies the success of applying physics-based computer simulations to understand important scientific and medical problems, including development and infectious diseases,” she says.

The award recognizes researchers for their outstanding contributions in computational or theoretical aspects of biophysical systems. It honors the mathematical, theoretical and technological innovations of Schulten and Luthey-Schulten, who produced key discoveries about the motion of individual proteins and nucleic acids, organelles and the entire cell.

“To have an award with their names on it is a huge honor because they were so influential,” Glazier says.

“If I have a scientific skill, it’s recognizing analogies between apparently dissimilar problems, take methods that are developed in one context and deploy them in another.”

This approach is highlighted in the paper, “Magnetization to Morphogenesis: A Brief History of the Glazier-Graner-Hogeweg Model” which talks about “taking methodology used in materials science and transferring it to the apparently unrelated domain of tissue biology.”

In his research, Glazier tries to see what others do not and focus on problems others avoid, because he recognizes a need for new ideas.

“My philosophy is to look for problems that are interesting but not being studied enough,” he says.

Glazier says he’s currently working with a group in the Netherlands to understand spina bifida – a condition affecting the spine that can cause bladder and bowel issues and leg weakness -- and another group at the University of Virginia which is applying the methodology to study why women have reduced muscle healing after menopause.

Glazier says the idea for CompuCell started more than 30 years ago when he was a physics grad student working, not in biology, but on material science. While collaborating with researchers at Exxon Research Laboratories who were developing computer simulations of grain growth using the Potts model, he realized he could use the same methodology “in a totally different context” to model the behavior of cells in tissues.

In other words, Glazier took a mathematical computational concept developed for physics, and redeployed it for developmental biology.

“The essence of interdisciplinarity is to combine ideas from different fields, and do something new,” he says.

CompuCell3D isn’t the only software using this methodology, but it’s one of the most popular. It’s also user-friendly -- high school students have written major scientific papers using it.

“It’s become a standard in the field,” Glazier says. “We didn’t expect that. The fact people from all over the world have adopted this methodology to do interesting things is rewarding. That a high school student can master it and do science with it is a big deal.

“We may not win a Nobel Prize with this, but we have made a big difference to the field.”

That difference will include personalized medicine. Glazier says it will be a game changer in his main research areas of eyes and skin.

“You hear talk of personalized medicine,” he says, “but most isn’t. Our goal is to develop models of your skin and your eyes, so when you have a disease, we can show that this is the treatment that is most likely to help you. I believe in this a lot. I hope in the next few years we’re able to deliver.”

Glazier seeks to build detailed models of the front and back of the eye, and of the blood vessels in the retina and the cornea to treat and prevent blindness in people with retinal diseases and age-related macular degeneration.

“That’s where I’d like to see this go.”

Glazier also works with Proctor and Gamble, which wants to design shampoos that don’t cause injury when they get in the eye. Glazier hopes that the work will lead not just to safer products, but to new drug treatments for cornea damage.

“The eye is a tricky organ,” Glazier says. “It’s different from other tissues. We need these methods to understand what’s going on with it. Think about how many people whose lives would be positively affected.”

Glazier takes the same approach to skin, which is far more complex than it appears.

“Skin diseases are a big deal. There is almost no modeling of skin diseases other than melanoma. We working to build those models.”

Using medical digital twins, the goal is to not just build generic models of skin, but of someone’s personal skin.

“Skin isn’t just skin,” Glazier says. “The skin on the front of your hand is different from the back of your hand. The skin in your mouth is different from the skin on your face. We working to build models of individual types of skin so we can understand the diseases are and how to treat them. That’s the kind of research I’m excited by.”

More than 30 years after the methodology’s debut, the excitement remains.

“If I knew 30 years ago that people would still be using it, I would have been a lot more careful than I was the first time,” Glazier says with a smile. “You think something is a throw-away, and it winds up having staying power. I never thought 30 years ago that this would still be a major computational technology.”