Nicholas Peppas has been honored with the Biomaterials Global Impact Award for 2022, which he received during the 32nd Annual Conference of the European Society of Biomaterials in Bordeaux, France. The award recognizes established researchers in the field of biomaterials who have accomplished great achievement.
Peppas is an internationally recognized engineering scientist and pioneer in the fields of drug delivery, controlled release, biomaterials and bionanotechnology.
He is a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering. He also holds appointments with UT’s College of Pharmacy and the Dell Medical School and is the Director of the Institute of Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine.
Peppas’ research blends modern molecular and cellular biology with materials engineering to produce next-generation systems and devices. He has contributed seminal work in the field of feedback-controlled biomedical devices as well as treatments and innovative drug delivery systems for cancers and autoimmune diseases.
Peppas has co-edited 37 books and has published more than 1,650 publications with 175,000 citations in the fields biomaterials, drug delivery, nanotechnology and regenerative medicine. He joined The University of Texas at Austin faculty in 2003 and served as chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering from 2009 to 2015. He is active in education and, in addition to his research accolades, has received praise for teaching. Having taught more than 4,100 students and supervised just over 1,000 researchers, he also received the top award for excellence in teaching from the American Society for Engineering Education.
Peppas is a member of many prestigious organizations, including the National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous international awards, distinctions, and honorary doctorates, including induction into the Royal Society of Chemistry, French Academy of Pharmacy, Royal Academy of Spain, Academy of Athens, Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas, among many others.
Most recently, Peppas received the Global Leader Award from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and an honorary doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. He was also named a member of the Academy of Romanian Scientists in 2022.
