Professor Lepek is currently Professor of Chemical Engineering at The Cooper Union. Professor Lepek joined the Department of Chemical Engineering in January 2009 and since then has developed new elective courses on Particle Technology, Pharmaceutical Engineering, and Applied Food Science and Engineering. In addition, he has made significant revisions to the Chemical Engineering Laboratory and Transport-related course sequences. He is also a co-author of the 5th Edition of the textbook, Transport Processes and Separation Process Principles (Pearson/Prentice-Hall).

Professor Lepek’s research interests include particle technology, fluidization and multiphase flow, pharmaceutical engineering, modeling of transport and biotransport phenomena, and engineering education. He has presented at numerous domestic and international conferences and has significant international experience. In 2016, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to be the Fulbright Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Graz in Graz, Austria, and, in 2015, was invited to be a Visiting Lecturer (Professor) at University College London in London, UK.

Professor Lepek has received many prestigious awards for his work in chemical engineering education. Besides receiving a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Austria, in 2015, he received the Ray W. Fahien Award from the Chemical Engineering Division of the American Society of Engineering Education for his teaching excellence and contributions to engineering pedagogy. In addition, in 2011, he received the Engineering Education Mentoring Grant from the same division to help further his work in developing innovations in engineering education and pedagogy. During his graduate studies at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Professor Lepek received a National Science Foundation IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) Fellowship in Nano-Pharmaceutical Engineering, and an IREE (International Research and Education in Engineering) award.

Professor Lepek performs significant service work for The Cooper Union and other professional societies and organizations. Since 2019, Professor Lepek has served as The Cooper Union’s Fulbright Program Adviser. He is an active member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and currently serves as the AIChE Education Division’s 1st Vice Chair. He currently oversees the division’s programming and co-leads other initiatives, such as the Virtual Communities of Practice (VCP) program.

Professor Lepek is also an expert on accreditation and assessment. In 2018, he co-led The Cooper Union’s most recent Middle States Self-Study evaluation and reaccreditation process. He volunteers as a Chemical Engineering Program Evaluator for ABET and as a Peer Evaluator for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE).