Four young ChE professors at Purdue: Elias Franses, Mike Malone (now Dean of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts), Jim Caruthers and Nicholas Peppas (Spring 1979)

The blizzard of ’78 in West Lafayette, IN (October 1978)

The aftermath of the blizzard of ’78 in front of the Purdue Union (October 1978)

One of the earliest pieces of equipment for the lab was a Plasticorder polymer mixer used in our polymer plasticizer work (September 1978)

Our first Instron apparatus for study of the small deformation mechanical behavior of hydrogels (March 1978)

The Andrej Potter building was inaugurated in 1978. In this new building named after the Purdue Dean of Engineering of forty years, Purdue created the first biomedical engineering program along with independent laboratories for biomedical and biochemical engineering. Prof. Peppas was one of the earliest BME researchers at Purdue and the co-founder of the BME department. His research interactions with Prof. Alan Rebar of Veterinary Medicine led to many ChEs taking histopathology and other medical courses in VETM. Dr. Rebar is VP of Purdue now. In the third floor of this “interdisciplinary engineering building” we had a laboratory for our artificial kidney and biomaterials research. (January 1978)

AIChE Meeting, New York. From left: Professor John O’Connell (now at the University of Virginia), Nicholas Peppas, Don Mohr (who did a PhD with Judd King at Berkeley), Professors GV Reklaitis and D Ramkrishna (in the back, Professors at Purdue), Steve Burdette (now with Corning in Corning, NY), Chris Rhodes (now with UOP in Chicago), Professor KC Chao (now retired from Purdue), Nancy Henkle-Burgess (now with Hewlett Packard in Cupertino, CA) and Mo Sood (then a postdoc of Prof. Reklaitis) (November 15, 1977)

Prof Peppas in his office when he was assigned to teach ChE 529, a course in Organic Chemical Technology, a course that Norris Shreve had started 40 years earlier… After Dr. Shreve's retirement, Prof. Lyle Albright took the course until the late 70s when Prof. Peppas was assigned to it and taught it four times as a modern course on process technology. As a result of this course, he received the first of three Engineering-wide Potter teaching awards.

A differential scanning calorimeter (Perkin Elmer DSC-1B) was the first equipment of the Peppas laboratory purchased in October 1976 with $10,500 start-up funds! These were the only start-up funds given at that time. Remodedling of CMET 210 took one year to be completed!

First month at Purdue University. The Engineering complex (September 1976)

July 4, 1976 (bicentennial) in Boston
Back row (from left): Nicholas Peppas, Pepi Klouda, Nanta Papazoglou holding the young Alexander Georgakis, Tina Georgaki, Mihalis Fardis (now Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Patras, Greece), Tonia Fardi. Front row: Vassilis Papazoglou (now Professor of Naval Engineering, National Technical University, Athens, Greece), and Christos Georgakis (now Professor of Chemical Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, MA)

Students and collaborators of the Arteriosclerosis Center of MIT including Bernie Cusack, a lab manager in the Arteriosclerosis Center, Carlos Ramirez (center right, then a PhD student at MIT, now a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez) and Larry Feig (then a MS student at MIT, now a Professor of Biochemistry at Tufts University in Medford, MA). In those days the Arteriosclerosis Center of MIT was a major research center. Chemical engineers such as professors Ken Smith and Clark Colton were associated with the Center. It was also during those days that Professor Peppas met Prof. Bob Nerem (see photographs of 2006) who was a young professor at Ohio State University and was working on arteriosclerosis as well. Graduate students and postdocs who passed through the laboratory in those days including Jay Scnhitzer (now Professor at Harvard Medical School), Carlos Ramirez (now a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez), Alan Glombicki, then a ChE undergraduate student, now Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston), Guy Chisolm (now a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Case Western Reserve University), Bob Bratzler (later Professor of Chemical Engineering at Princeton and now a senior consultant in Boston), Rena Bizios (now Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio) and George Truskey (now Head of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University). (February 1976)

Nicholas Peppas holds a biocompatible poly(vinyl alcohol) membrane developed during his PhD thesis at MIT. However, it was 2 1/2 years later, in 1976, that the first work on the biocompatibility of PVA was published, work that attracted wide scientific interest both in the professional and popular press (January 1976)

Peppas as a postdoctoral fellow at the Arteriosclerosis Center of MIT. It was during this period at MIT that Nicholas got involved seriously in biomedical engineering. (October 1975)

Cape Cod, Massachusetts
From left: Dr. Petros Antonopoulos (MIT nuclear engineer, now practicing engineer in Boston), Dr Stavros Anagnostopoulos (MIT civil engineer, now Professor at the University of Patras, Greece), Professor Elias Gyftopoulos (MIT, Dept of Nuclear Engineering, now Professor Emeritus at MIT), and Nicholas Peppas. Sitting: Dr Ioannis Constantopoulos (MIT, civil engineer, now practicing engineer in Athens, Greece) (September 1975)

Nicholas Peppas (very top, left, leaning towards the blackboard) as a postdoctoral fellow in the Arteriosclerosis center of MIT of Prof Robert Lees. Among others, Alan Glombicki, then a ChE undergraduate student (in front and to the right of N Peppas, now Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston), Larry Feig (just in front of N Peppas, now Professor of Biochemistry at Tufts University), Rena Bizios (left of L Feig, now Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio), Jay Schnitzer (left and behind Rena Bizios, now Professor of Surgery at the Harvard Medical School) and Guy Chisolm (next to Jay Schnitzer, now Vice Chairman of the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic) (June 1975)

Nicholas Peppas served in the Greek Army. At graduation as a second Lieutenant in the School of Officers of the Ordnance Corps of the Greek Army and the leader of his class, he is addressed by general Galathianakis. Lamia, Greece, August 1974

Peppas (right) at the Ordnance Corps School for Officers of the Greek Army in Lamia, Greece. Military service is a requirement in Greece (August 1974)

Dr Nicholas Peppas served in the Greek Army. He graduated as a second Lieutenant in the School of Officers of the Ordnance Corps of the Greek Army. As the leader of his class, he represented his class of officers at the graduation ceremony in Lamia, Greece in August 1974

Peppas sailing at Charles River (MIT, Cambridge, MA) as a graduate student (April 1973)

The first paper of Prof Peppas. It was published in the AIChE Journal and reported results of his studies on the thermodynamics of multivalent polyelectrolytes. This was the result of work he had done under the supervision of Prof. Herman “Fritz” Meissner while he was a teaching assistant in the spring 1972! Fritz Meissner was Peppas’ academic grandfather as he was the supervisor of Prof Merrill in 1945-47. The paper shown here is part of a series of papers published on this subject by Fritz Meissner and his then graduate students including C Cusik and Jeff Tester, now an MIT ChE professor.

Nicholas Peppas as a second year graduate student in Ed Merrill MIT laboratories of biomaterials. The samples in the jars are semicrystalline poly(vinyl alcohol) gels. (December 1972)

At the MIT Biomaterials Laboratories of Prof. Edward Merrill
From left: Steve Rose (now in Miami), Hossein Banijamali (now with Canadian Petroleum Processing, Inc.), Tim Burke (now with ExxonMobil), Michael Sefton (now University Professor at the Univ of Toronto) and Nicholas Peppas (May 1972)

The MIT Cobalt-60 (gamma irradiation unit) was the only equipment in the small building called E-66 in the 1950s-70s. The building was demolished at the end of 1972 and became the site of the new Chemical Engineering building (named again E66) that was inaugurated two years later… (March 1972)

The MIT electron beam irradiation unit at the Van de Graaf generator laboratory (December 1971)

IAESTE internship at the Shell company in Pernis, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Here, Nicholas Peppas (right) with NTU Athens classmate Costas Lamnatos (left, now Director Ferronikeli Complex L.L.C.) in an outing in the canals of Rotterdam. The movie theater was playing MASH that had just started showing in Europe (July 1970)