Dr. Nicholas Peppas earned his Sc.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973. He joined the faculty at The University of Texas at Austin in 2003 and directs the Laboratory of Biomaterials, Drug Delivery, Bionanotechnology and Molecular Recognition. Peppas is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the French Academy of Pharmacy. He has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Ghent, Parma and Athens.

Peppas' research contributions have been in several areas of drug delivery, biomaterials, biomolecular engineering, mass transfer, polymerization kinetics and reaction engineering, and polymers physics. The multidisciplinary approach of his research in biomolecular engineering blends modern molecular and cellular biology with engineering to generate next-generation systems and devices, including bioMEMS with enhanced applicability, reliability, functionality and longevity. The fundamental studies of his group have provided valuable results on biomaterials design and development.