Christmas 1979
Don Hooker (MS ’81), Don Miller (PhD ’84), Connie Moynihan, David Meadows (MS ’82, then PhD with Jerry Schultz at the University of Michigan) and Marianne Hooker

December 1979
Nitu Sekhon (BS ’80) runs a protein diffusion experiment using PVA membranes. It was in the late 1970s that a series of models of the effect of mesh size on solute transport was developed by Katy Reinhart-Stutts (MS ’82), Humphrey Moynihan (MS ’83) and Nitu went on to do a PhD in polymers at Carnegie Mellon University (link) and is now a manager with Saint-Gobain High Performance in Northborough, MA.

October 1979
First Row: Kathy and Ray Davidson (MS ‘82, PhD ‘85), Mary Beth Hill (MS ’81), Marianne and Hon Hooker (MS ’81),
Don Barar, Don Miller (PhD ’84), Katy Reinhart-Stutts (MS ’82)
Second Row: Kathy Eleutherakis-Napp, Lucy Hair-Lucht (BS ’78, PhD ’83), Scott Napp (MS ’80), Bob Lucht,
Nitu Sekhon, John Koszuta, Richard Korsmeyer (MS ’80, PhD ’83), Humphrey Moynihan (MS ’83), David Meadows (MS ’82)

October 1979
From left: Lucy Hair-Lucht (BS ’78, PhD ’83), Mary Beth Hill (MS ’81), Richard Korsmeyer (MS ’80, PhD ’83), Marianne and Hon Hooker (MS ’81), Don Barar (MS ’82 then an MBA at the University of Michigan), David Meadows (MS ’82, then PhD with Jerry Schultz at the University of Michigan), Don Miller (PhD ’84), Kathy Eleutherakis-Napp, Scott Napp (MS ’80, later PhD with Henry Lim from the University of California at Irvine, Humphrey Moynihan (MS ’83, then PhD ’87 with Linda Wang of Purdue), Nitu Sekhon (BS ’80) and Katy Reinhart-Stutts (MS ’82).

October 1979
From left, clockwise: Marianne and Hon Hooker, Don Barar, David Meadows, Don Miller

October 1979
Ken Zieminski (MS ’80, now at 3M), Nicholas Peppas, Lucy Hair-Lucht (BS ’78, PhD ’83, now with the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California, see also link) and Mark Kwoka (a graduate student of Prof. J. Caruthers, now link)

October 1979
Ken Zieminski (MS ’80, later PhD at the University of Tennessee in polymer science, now at 3M and living in Woodbury, MN) works with the Plasticorder®. Ken was the first graduate student to work on migration of plasticizers from polymers. His pioneering work, published 29 years ago (link and link), pointed out for the first time the serious problems with migration of phthalate-based plasticizers such as DEHP! Along with research on plastic packaging materials (by Rohit Khanna and others), the laboratory was soon recognized as a leading research laboratory on food packaging (see for example link)

October 1979
Along with Katy Reinhart, Humphrey Moynihan (MS ’83, then PhD ’87 with Prof Linda Wang, now with MeadWestvaco in Roanoke, VA; link) was a very early pioneer of solute diffusion theories in hydrogels. He developed the theory of solute diffusion in highly crosslinked, non-Gaussian networks (link link). His work showed the importance of the network structure and mesh size on solute transport. Until then, it was generally believed that solute transport in gels and hydrogels was only affected by the equilibrium water content, something that Humphrey invalidated.

October-November 1979
Lucy Hair-Lucht (BS ’78, PhD ’83, now with the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California) was the pioneering student who initiated the work on the use of macromolecular theories to analyze the swelling behavior of bituminous coals, a subject that continued until the very early 1990s with DOE support. Lucy was the first to develop a non-Gaussian network theory for tetrafunctional and other crosslinked structures. Application of the Lucht-Peppas theory to highly crosslinked networks (link) gave exact values of the Mc and chi terms. Application of the same theories to bituminous coals led to the first accurate analysis of the mesh size in coals (see for example link). These results contributed to the discovery of better solvents and procedures for coal liquefaction.

October 1979
Ken Zieminski (MS ’80, now at 3M) and Kathy Davidson (BS ’82, English major) in the CMET 312K laboratory. These small laboratories in the third floor were poorly equipped and were disliked by most graduate students… Kathy Davidson was an important member of the 1981 College Bowl team of our laboratory a team that won the Purdue University-wide tournament and went to the regionals. The Purdue professors in charge of training the Purdue team were very concerned that the winning team was from Engineering and made every effort to replace some of its members by others! Members of this team included Richard Korsmeyer (link), Ray Davidson (link), Kathy Davidson (link) and Jennifer Sinclair (link).

June 1979
Ray Davidson (MS ’82, PhD ’85) and Nicholas Peppas run a 1970s-vintage artificial kidney in our laboratories (June 1979). In the 1976-1985 period, Peppas had major research on non-thrombogenic biomaterials and artificial kidney membranes. He was a major contributor to the development of one of the earliest completely wearable artificial kidneys

November 1978
Rohit Khanna (middle) and Paula Hansen (right), classmates of the 1979 class, were two of the earliest undergraduates who worked in the laboratory. They made significant research contributions and published 5 papers. Rohit went on to do a PhD with Prof. John Seinfeld at CalTech and is now VP of Waters/Millipore, while Paula did an MS with Prof. Mike Williams at UC Berkeley and is now with Dow Chemicals in California (see also link). In those days, undergraduate research assistants were an integral component of the research focus of the laboratory. Many of them did long projects and published original data. More than 710 undergraduates have worked in our laboratories in the past 36 years.

Fall 1978
Rohit Khanna (BS ’79) and Nicholas Peppas running a Banbury mixer (Fall 1978). Rohit Khanna was particularly proficient in mathematical modeling. As a junior and senior he was working simultaneously in two different projects with two different professors (NA Peppas and GV Reklaitis). He went on to publish several papers. At the 1979 regional AIChE meeting (in Notre Dame, IN) he presented two papers and received the first prize of the meeting. Also in 1979, he presented a paper at the ANTEC meeting of the Society of Plastics Engineers in New Orleans and received the Best Student Award. Dr. Rohit Khanna is now a Vice President, Worldwide Marketing, Waters Corporation (see link and link)

March 1977
Chris Creagan (PhD ’79) and Terry Papoutsakis (PhD ’79) working in the laboratory as graduate students. Professor Peppas was a member of Professor Papoutsakis’ PhD thesis committee. They met for the first time at the National Technical University of Athens in March 1974 when Terry was still a senior and Nicholas was working temporarily at NTU. Their friendship has continued for the past 34 years. Te recipient of numerous international awards including the Alpha Chi Sigma AIChE award, Terry Papoutsakis is now the Dupont Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. As an undergraduate at Rice University, Professor Lisa Brannon (PhD ’88) worked in Prof. Papoutsakis’ laboratory.

December 1976
Linda Russell-Brown (BS ’77, then JD ‘98 from the University of Houston; now link), 1976-77 President of the AIChE Student Chapter, works in the laboratory.

May 1976
From the class picture of the Purdue ChE graduating class of 1976. Two graduating students became the first graduate students of the Peppas group. Left: Todd Gehr (with glasses, MS '77, now Chief of Nephrology at the Virginia Commonwealth Medical School; now link) and Right: Bill Bussing (MS '78, now Managing Director of BP)