Introduction to Editorial Board Members: Prof Nicholas A. Peppas

On the launch of this inaugural issue of AIChE’s and SBE’s Bioengineering & Translational Medicine, I must express my deep gratitude to the members of our Editorial Advisory Board. Their expertise and experience provide a strong foundation supporting the broad range of bioengineering topics that will be covered in the journal. To highlight this strength, we plan to feature one of our distinguished Editorial Advisory Board members in each issue. In this inaugural issue, we are proud to feature Prof Nicholas A Peppas. Nicholas Peppas holds a Cockrell Family Regents Chaired Professorship in Engineering, Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin, with appointments in the departments of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, in Surgery in the Dell Medical School, and in the College of Pharmacy. He received his Diploma in Engineering from the National Technical University in Athens and an Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Chemical Engineering. He has also received numerous honorary doctorates, including those from the University of Ghent (Belgium), the University of Parma (Italy), the University of Ljublijana (Slovenia), the University of Athens (Greece), the University of Patras (Greece), and an honorary professorship from the Sichuan University (China). Professor Peppas’ research has made a transformative impact on drug delivery, which has leaped to the forefront of science and technology. In particular, Prof Peppas’ research on mathematical models and novel biomaterials has yielded not only new insights into drug release mechanisms and new technologies to control them, but has also provided a new paradigm for research conducted at the interface of medicine and engineering. His early studies on drug diffusion in polymeric systems provided the much needed quantitative tools to describe drug release, an equation that is now commonly known as KorsemeyerPeppas model. This particular study established a number of key fundamental principles of drug release from porous matrices. Specifically, swellable porous matrices exhibit complex release behavior arising from swelling-induced structural changes of the matrix. This pioneering work provided numerous insights into drug release mechanisms, including dependence on drug size, the role of matrix composition, and the role of matrix swelling. Further, this study provided the vision that, if the matrix materials and additives are chosen carefully, it should be possible to control the drug release to a desired rate. The lessons learned from these studies have fueled groundbreaking fundamental as well as translational advances in the field of hydrogel-based drug delivery systems. Today, hydrogel-based drug delivery systems are used in various applications including wound dressings, contact lenses, mucosal delivery systems, topical formulations, and depot injections, among others. The impact of this paper is also clear from the fact that this equation has been cited more than 2,700 times to date. Overall, Dr Peppas’ research has been cited over 84,000 times with