Nicholas A. Peppas

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Nicholas A. Peppas (born August 25, 1948, in Athens, Greece) is a chemical and biomedical engineer who helped create the field of biomaterials and controlled drug delivery. He studied chemical engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (D.Eng., 1971) and earned his Sc.D. at MIT in 1973 under Edward W. Merrill. After a postdoc at MIT, he taught at Purdue University and later joined the University of Texas at Austin in 2002, where he holds the Cockrell Family Regents Chair and directs the Institute of Biomaterials, Drug Delivery, and Regenerative Medicine. His work blends engineering, chemistry, and biology to design materials and devices that release medicines in a controlled way.

Peppas is best known for developing key theories and models of drug transport in polymers and hydrogels, including the Peppas equation, which describes how drugs diffuse and swell in release systems. He contributed foundational work on swelling-controlled release, crosslinked biomaterials, and intelligent polymers, helping to launch many medical products and devices, such as oral delivery systems for insulin and other proteins. He has founded three companies and published about 1,450 papers with tens of thousands of citations, making him one of the most cited researchers in his field. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Inventors, and has received honorary doctorates from several universities. He is married to Lisa Brannon-Peppas and has two children; in his spare time, he enjoys opera and history.