Nicholas A. Peppas is the recipient of the 2019 Monie A. Ferst Award.
He is the Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering and a professor of chemical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Peppas holds appointments in the departments of Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering and the Division of Pahmaceutics. His work is also part of the Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care at the Dell Medical School. He is director of the Institute for Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Texas at Austin.
His work in biomaterials, drug delivery, regenerative medicine, and bionanotechnology follows a multidisciplinary approach by blending modern molecular and cellular biology with engineering principles to design the next-generation of medical systems and devices for patient treatment. Over the past 43 years he has set the fundamentals and rational design of drug delivery systems and developed models of drug and protein diffusion in controlled release devices and biological tissues.
In 2012 he received the Founders Award of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the highest recognition of the Academy. In 2018, he received the Adam Yarmolinsky Medal of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). He is the only scientist to have received the highest awards of both NAE and NAM. Peppas is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering, Canadian Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Inventors, the National Academy of France, the Royal Academy of Spain, the Academy of Athens (Greece), the International Academy of Biomedical Engineering, the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Sciences of Texas, and the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK).
He has been recognized with approximately 150 awards from the American Chemical Society (Applied Polymer Science Award and Herman Mark Award), AIChE (Founders Award, William Walker Award, Institute Lecture, Jay Bailey Award, Bioengineering Award, Materials Award), the Biomedical Engineering Society (Pritzker Medal and Distinguished Scientist Award), the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (Pierre Galletti Award), the Society for Biomaterials (Founders, Clemson and Hall Awards), the Controlled Release Society (Founders, Heller and Eurand Awards) and other societies. He is also the recipient of the 2013 Giulio Natta Medal from Italy and the 2010 Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal. In 2008, AIChE named him one of the “One Hundred Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era”. Peppas is the editor-in-chief of Regenerative Biomaterials (Oxford University Press) and Deputy Editor of Science Advances (Science).
From 2008-2016 Peppas was the President of the International Union of Societies of Biomaterials Science and Engineering. He also served as the chair of the Engineering Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, chair of the Council of BME Chairs, president of SFB and president of the Controlled Release Society. He is a Fellow of AAAS, AIChE, APS, ACS, MRS, SFB, BMES, AIMBE, CRS, AAPS, and ASEE. He has supervised the research of 112 PhDs and approximately 180 postdocs and graduate students. He has published 1,600 papers and edited 37 books. His has more than 125,000 citations and an H=165.
Peppas holds a Dipl. Eng. from the NTU of Athens (1971), a Sc.D. from MIT (1973). He also has honorary doctorates from the University of Ghent (Belgium), University of Parma (Italy), University of Athens (Greece), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), University of Patras (Greece), National Technical University of Athens (Greece), University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). China has elected him a Foreign member of CAE and has awarded him honorary professorships from Sichuan University, Beihang University, Peking Union Medical College, and PLA Hospital and Medical School.