December 5, 2009 - Peppas Laboratory Christmas Party
Christmas 2009 with (from left) Steve and Beth Marek, Cody and Molly Schoener, Ben and Carolyn Bayer, Anh Nguyen, Ana Fernandez, Diana Snelling, Marty Gran, Maggie Phillips, Emily and Bill Liechty, David and Jennifer Kryscio, Brandon Slaughter, Nicholas Peppas, Adam Ekensaeair

December 5, 2009 - Peppas Laboratory Christmas Party
Christmas 2009 with (from left) Steve Marek, Cody Schoener, Carolyn Bayer, Ana Fernandez, Anh Nguyen, Diana Snelling, Marty Gran, Maggie Phillips, Bill Liechty, David Kryscio, Nicholas Peppas, Brandon Slaughter, Adam Ekenseair

December 2009
Katie Maass, a ChE senior and Engineering Honors student, in front of her poster

December 2009
Andrew Wong, a BME junior and Engineering Honors student, in front of his poster

December 2009
Andrea Le Blanc, a BME sophomore, and her 2009 poster

December 2009
Amy Creecy and Lauren Collins, two BME students working in the lab, in front of their posters.

 June 2009 - Peppas Laboratory
Front row: Steve Marek, Marty Gran, Adam Ekenseair, Maggie Phillips, Brandon Slaughter, Diana Snelling, Lauren Collins
Back row: Edgar Perez, Cody Schoener, Bill Liechty, David Kryscio

December 1, 2008
Monica Richards, a senior in BME, by her poster at the BME poster session

November 2008 - Peppas Laboratory All Researchers
First row: Brandon Slaughter, Marty Gran, Ben Boral, Diana Snelling, Matt Winters
Second row: Adam Ekenseair, Danny Strinden, Monica Richards, Asha Fleury, Jaclyn Huseman, Amber Doiron, David Cantu,  John Yang. Ruben Morones, Steve Marek
Third row: David Kryscio, Justin Shofner, Bill Liecthy, Carolyn Bayer, Stephen Dietz, Barbara Ekerdt, Robert Seidel
Fourth Row: Alper Konuk, Maggie Phillips, Derek Jones, Charles Conn, Melissa Kanzelberger, James Dempsey

November 2008 - Peppas Laboratory Graduate Researchers
First row: Amber Doiron, Melissa Kanzelberger, Steve Marek
Second row: Justin Shofner, Maggie Phillips, Carolyn Bayer, Diana Snelling, David Kryscio
Third row: Adam Ekenseair, Bill Liecthy, Brandon Slaughter, Marty Gran

November 2008 - Peppas Laboratory Undergraduate Researchers
First row: Monica Richards, Jaclyn Huseman, David Cantu
Second row: Ben Boral, Barbara Ekerdt, Matt Winters, Stephen Dietz
Third row: Danny Strinden, Robert Seidel, James Dempsey
Fourth Row: Alper Konuk, Derek Jones, Charles Conn, Asha Fleury

November 24, 2008
Amber Doiron (PhD '08) did her PhD mostly under the direction of professor Lisa Brannon-Peppas (PhD '88). Nicholas Peppas was a co-advisor.

November 24, 2008
The research group during a reception in honor of Nicholas Peppas' election to IOM. From left:  Prof. Geirge Georgiou, Mr Patricia Marcum (Executive Administrative Assistant), Dr Amber Doiron (PhD student No. 79, who had graduated that same morning, advised predominantly by Prof. Lisa Brannon-Peppas), Nicholas Peppas, Maggie Phillips, Adam Ekenseair, Dr Daniel Carr (PhD student No. 78), David Kryscio, Dr. Justin Shofner (PhD student No. 80, who had graduated just 30 minutes before this event), Diana Snelling, Bill Liechty, Prof. Don Paul. Speaking to the group is Prof. Ken Diller, chair of BME.  Absent from this picture: Carolyn Bayer, Marty Gran, Melissa Kanzelberger, Shahana Khurshid, Steve Marek, Brandon Slaughter

November 5, 2008
Adam Ekenseair at the Centennial meeting of AIChE in Philadelphia, PA.

October 2008
Marta Gomez at the Mediterranean Chemical Engineering meeting in Barcelona, Spain.

June 2008
Diana Snelling (right) during her internship at Professor Teruo Okano's laboratories at the Tokyo Women's Medical College in Tokyo, Japan

January 2008
From the PhD thesis defense of Irma Yolanda Sanchez Chavez at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico with N Peppas, Irma Sanchez and Prof Sergio Martinez

November 2007 - Peppas Laboratory All Researchers
First row: Alper Konuk, Melissa Kanzelberger, Farha Butt, Kristin Lutek, Amber Doiron, Maggie Phillips, Isis Trenchard
Second row: Nicholas Peppas, Adam Ekenseair, Omar Fisher, Barbara Ekerdt, John Yang. Ruben Morones, Steve Marek
Third row: Stephen Dietz, Brandon Slaughter, Daniel Carr, Martin Gran, Diana Snelling, Shahana Khurshid, James Dempsey, Justin Shofner, David Kryscio, Carolyn Baker

November 2007 - Peppas Laboratory Graduate Researchers
First row: Amber Doiron, Omar Fisher, Melissa Kanzelberger, Ruben Morones, Maggie Phillips, Diana Snelling, Shahana Khurshid, Carolyn Bayer, Steve Marek
Second row: Dr. Nicholas A. Peppas, Martin Gran, Justin Shofner, Daniel Carr, Adam Ekenseair, David Kryscio, Brandon Slaughter

November 2007
Isis Trenchard (BS ’08, winner of the 2007 undergraduate research award of the Biomedical Engineering Society), Nicholas Peppas and Maggie Phillips (PhD candidate, President of the National Student Chapters of the Society for Biomaterials, 2007-2009)

October 2007
Experiments at the Thomas Jefferson Medical Center in Philadelphia, PA. From left: Maggie Phillips, Daniel Carr and Tony Tuesca, a Drexel University PhD student and friend of our laboratory.

February 2007 - Peppas Laboratory
First row: Dr. Nicholas Peppas, Adrianne Rosales, Martin Gran, Omar Fisher, Jeff Wilson, Carolyn Bayer, Ruben Morones, David Beavers, Melissa Kanzelberger, Maggie Phillips, Shahana Khurshid, Irma Sanchez, Isis Trenchard, Stephen Marek, Megan Kittle
Second row: Brandon Slaughter, Daniel Carr, Justin Shofner, Diana Snelling, Adam Ekenseair, Terry Farmer

August 2006
With Lisa Lao, a Ph D student at the Nanyang Technical University, who was a visiting scientist in our laboratory at UT.

Summer 2006
Brock Thomas (PhD ’06, now at Eastman Chemicals, Kingsport, TN), Mathilde Boudes (worked with us in the summer 2006, now at Sanofi-Aventis in Paris) and Don Owens (PhD ’07, now at ExxonMobil in Houston)

Summer 2006
Annual croquet game: From right Omar Fisher, Tania Betancourt (now postdoc in the Peppas labs), Steve Marek, Justin Shofner, Adam Ekenseair, Brock Thomas (leaning, now with Eastman Chemicals in Kingsport, TN)), Terry Farmer (now with Capitol One in Dallas, TX), Irma Sanchez (now a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Tecnologico of Monterrey, Mexico) and Amber Doiron

March 2006 - PhD Students
First row: Michael Marks, Omar Fisher, Carolyn Bayer, Jeff Wilson, Dr. Nicholas Peppas, Daniel Carr, Justin Shofner, Adam Ekenseair, Steve Marek
Second row: Melissa Kanzelberger, Kristy Wood, Hunter Lauten, J. Brock Thomas, Don Owens, Terry Farmer, Ruben Morones

March 2006 - Undergraduate Lab Members
David Beavers, Greg Stone, Jonathan Ng, Joseph Tsingsanchali, Courtney Creecy, Peter Jian, Jack Eby, Brandon Slaughter

March 2006 - Laboratory of Dr. Nicholas Peppas

December 2005
Lisa Brannon-Peppas (PhD ’88) receives the BME Teaching Award at UT.

February 2005
Kristi Anseth (BS ’92, postdoc ’94-95) receives the Alan Waterman Award from Dr Arden Bement, Director of the National Science Foundation. Kristi was first an undergraduate researcher in our laboratory. She started in 1990, having just arrived from Williston, ND. Her research project (that became also her BS thesis) was the kinetic analysis of fast polymerization reactions for multifunctional polymers. She did her PhD at the University of Colorado as a NSF Fellow, working with Christopher Bowman (she was his first PhD student) with Alec Scranton and Nicholas Peppas being members of her thesis committee. She returned to Purdue in 1994-95 as a postdoc and then went to MIT with Bob Langer. She is now a Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

November 2004 (AIChE - Austin, TX)
First row: Kristy Wood (Epic), Tom Dziubla (U Kentucky), Balaji Narasimhan (Iowa SU), Nicki Bergmann (Rice Univ)
Second row: Mark Byrne (Auburn U), Madeline Torres-Lugo (U Puerto Rico), Alec Scranton (U Iowa), Marianthi Ierapetritou (Rutgers), Bob Parker (U Pittsburgh), Yannis Androulakis (Rutgers), Esmaiel Jabbari (U S Carolina), Kim Hayden (U Missouri), Chris Bowman (U Colorado), Chris Brazel (U Alabama), Surya Mallapragada (Iowa SU)
Third row: Nicholas Peppas, Lisa Brannon-Peppas (U Texas), Tony Lowman (Drexel), Jay Blanchette (U Colorado), David Henthorn (U Missouri), Tom Chiesl (Northwestern U) and Zach Hilt (U Kentucky)

September 2004
Don Miller (PhD ’84) at the award ceremony of the “Heroes of Chemistry Award” of the American Chemical Society with Cavan Redmond, President, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare

April 2004
Jay Blanchette, Nicki Bergmann, Nicholas Peppas and Brock Thomas in our new laboratories at UT

April 2004
Brock Thomas, Kristy Wood, Jay Blanchette and Nicholas A Peppas

April 2004
Nicholas Peppas and Jay Blanchette

March 2004
First row: Don Owens, Mamoru Fukuda, Terry Farmer, Hunter Lauten, Nikhil Kavimandan, Brock Thomas, Jay Blanchette, Zach Hilt.
Second row: Kristy Wood, Nicki Bergmann, Preeti Sood, Dan Barad, Jeff Wilson. It is interesting that with the departure of Jeff Wilson in March 2008, all these PhD students of the first generation of UT students have already graduate in 2008.

Christmas 2003
N Peppas, Elizabeth Carroll (BS ’04), Zach Hilt (PhD ’04), Dan Barad (in residence ’03 and ’04), Jay Blanchette (PhD ’04), Nikhil Kavimandan (PhD ’05), Terry Farmer (PhD ’07), Laura Serra (PhD ’06), Hunter Lauten (PhD ’07), Brock Thomas (PhD ’06), Kristy Wood (PhD ’06), Nicki Bergmann (PhD ’05), Don Owens (PhD ’07), Preeti Sood (in residence ’04)

Christmas 2003
N Peppas, Jay Blanchette, Zach Hilt, Lisa Brannon-Peppas, Nikhil Kavimandan, Elizabeth Carroll, Preeti Sood, Dan Barad, Terry Farmer, Kate Lee, Laura Serra, Hunter Lauten, Brock Thomas. Tania Betancourt, Kristy Wood, Nicki Bergmann Don Owens, Carolyn Files. The Christmas parties started in December 1977 and have continued every year. This is a great tradition of the lab and a great occasion for everybody to dress up.

August 2002
Aaron Foss (PhD ’02) and Nicholas Peppas prepare new oral drug delivery systems. Aaron was the originator of a new class of mucoadhesive carriers for oral delivery of insulin. This is the last picture from the Purdue labs that grew from a modest room of 400 sq. ft. in the third floor of the CMET building in 1976, where Todd Gehr and Bill Bussing did their theses, to more than 3,500 sq. ft. of well equipped labs.

Spring 2002: The last group of graduate students at Purdue University
Front: Mark Byrne, Bumsang Kim, Laura Serra, Nicki Bergmann, Ebru Oral, Jennifer Lopez, David Henthorn
Back: Nicholas Peppas, Aaron Foss, Nikhil Kavimandan, Zach Hilt, Cristina Donini, Jay Blanchette

Of these, Ebru Oral, Jennifer Lopez, Aaron Foss, and Cristina Donini finished at Purdue and the rest moved to the University of Texas at the end of December 2002. Ebru Oral was the very last student in the 26 year history of the lab at Purdue. She recalls printing six copies of her PhD thesis in the lab printer on November 20, 2002. As soon as she had finished, that printer was the last item packed and loaded in two trucks that left for Austin, arriving there on December 3. The Austin labs were operational on January 15, 2003! Mark Byrne and David Henthorn returned to Purdue at the end of 2003 to defend their theses. The rest graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. It is rather incredible that a lab of more than 20 researchers was down for only 50 days!

April 2002
First row: Nikhil Kavimandan, Ebru Oral, Laura Serra, Nicki Bergmann, Jennifer Lopez, Cristina Donini, Bumsang Kim and Mark Byrne.
Second row: Aaron Foss, Jay Blanchette, Zach Hilt, David Henthorn. Seven of these students (Ebru, Nicki, Bumsang, Mark, Jay, Zach and David) became professors!

2002
Front: Madeline Torres-Lugo (Univ Puerto Rico), Cristina Donini (Serono), Bill Leobandung (businessman in Jakarta and Medan, Indonesia), Jing Zhang (Givaudan), Monica Little (3M), Ebru Oral (Mass General Hospital), Bumsang Kim (Korea)
Back: David Henthorn (Univ Missouri-Rolla), Yanbin Huang (Tsinghua University, China), Jenny Ward (Exxon Mobil), Javier Pacheco-Gomez (Lilly), Aaron Foss (Medtronic), Petr Bures (Bayer)

December 2001
Nicholas Peppas, Nikhil Kavimandan, Michelle Foss, Aaron Foss, Mrs Kim and son, Bumsang Kim, Kim Heyden (now Heyden-Henthorn), Nicki Bergmann, David Henthorn, Carlee Hilt, Zach Hilt, Laura Serra, Susan Byrne, Cristina Donini, Mark Byrne, Jay Blanchette, Jennifer Lopez, Scott McClellan

May 2001
Rachel Mace (right, BS '82 as Rachel Lenox, see also photograph of March 1982) now Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University, receiving an award in 2001.

December 2000
Sitting: Petr Bures, Christie Dorski (now Christie Bures), Madeline Torres-Lugo, Kelley Keys, Jennifer Harting Ward, Tony Fan Standing: Tony Lowman, NAP, Yanbin Huang, Bob Parker, Bill Leobandung, Kairali Podual-Banerjee, Atsmon Shahar, Jing Zhang-Rosing, Rob Scott, Rachel Peck (now Rachel Simmons), Aaron Foss, Tonya Tetrick (now Tonya Chalfant), Kevin Rabinovitch, Diane Whirledge, David Henthorn, Upma Sharma, Tom Dziubla, Sandy Mui

December 2000
Yanbin Huang, Nicholas Peppas, Jay Blanchette, Bumsang Kim, Ebru Oral, Madeline Torres-Lugo, Teresa Zakaria, Daphne Robinson, Petr Bures, Aaron Foss, Erin Moulesong, Oya Sipahigil, David Henthorn, Mark Byrne, Jennifer Lopez

December 2000
Gavin Sinclair (BS ’83, 1961-2000) in 1999. Gavin W. Sinclair, was born South Bend, IN, but raised in Indianapolis. He enrolled in ChE at Purdue University where he met Jennifer (see below); they were married in 1981. He pursued a double major in industrial management and chemical engineering and finished both of these degrees in four years graduating in May 1983. While at Purdue, he published his first paper in our laboratory, on the analysis of drug release mechanisms from swellable polymers. The paper was published in 1983 in the Journal of Membrane Science and has been cited more than 200 times. In June 1983, Gavin and Jennifer moved to New Jersey where he started work with Air Products and Chemicals in Allentown, PA. In 1990 he left his position as Market Manager for Automotive Applications at Air Products to join PPG Industries in Pittsburgh, PA. There he worked as Business Manager of Process Chemicals until 1997 when he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision as well as the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. As a professor, he was an outstanding teacher. In December 1985, when he was 24 years of age, he was diagnosed with cancer and given four months to live. During most of 1986, he battled cancer and endured very aggressive chemotherapy and radiation treatments, as well as a very extensive surgical operation to remove a huge tumor in his chest, which involved severing one of his vocal chords and removing a lobe of his lung. As a result of the very aggressive cancer treatments which saved his life, he suffered many subsequent health problems including a stroke in 1990, constant pain which necessitated spinal surgery in 1989, and congestive heart failure which limited his physical ability. It was this damage to his heart which eventually resulted in his death. Although he was physically limited due to the many health problems he faced, he completed a Masters degree in Economics at Lehigh University while working full-time at Air Products and completed a PhD in Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon while working full-time at PPG. He also wrote a book entitled "All Things Work for Good" about his cancer experiences. Gavin enjoyed politics, golf and writing. He had a great skill for getting to the heart of an issue and coming up with novel approaches and ideas. His last textbook before his untimely death, "Life, Love and Economics" was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in October 2000 and Newsweek magazine in May 2000. Gavin passed away in Tucson, Arizona during Christmas 2000 at the age of 39. He was mourned by the Chemical Engineering and the whole Purdue University community, where his teaching and educational skills had become legendary.

November 2000
From the dinner for the departure of Dr Hideki Ichikawa (now professor of Pharmacy at Kobe-Gakuin University, Kobe, Japan). Jing Zhang, Jorge Pacheco-Gomez, Madeline Torres-Lugo, Ebru Oral, Bill Leobandung, Eduardo Juan, Nicholas Peppas, David Henthorn, Yanbin Huang, Hideki Ichikawa, Petr Bures and Aaron Foss

April 2000
A rare occasion of a Laboratory graduate awarding a prestigious award to another one… Here Professor Jennifer Sinclair (BS ’83) awards the 2000 ChE Alumnae Award to Sandy Mui (BS ’00). Sandy worked in the lab in 1999. Jennifer Sinclair Curtis was an important researcher in the lab in the 1981-83 period. She worked on moving boundary value problems during penetrant transport in glassy polymers and analyzed the associated swelling front. She published two very important modeling papers and went on to do her PhD at Princeton. She became a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Lafayette College, Carnegie-Mellon University, University of Arizona and Purdue University. In 2004 she moved to the University of Florida where she is presently the Head of Chemical Engineering. The Winter 2008 issue of Chemical Engineering Education has a wonderful article about Jennifer’s life and accomplishments (link to article).