Dr. Pepper is presently Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Nevada Center for Advanced Computational Methods at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at the US Air Force Academy where he taught from 2011-2013. He served as an ASME Congressional Fellow in 2004, working for US Senator Dianne Feinstein in Washington, DC. He was appointed Interim Dean of the UNLV College of Engineering in 2002 and served as Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 1996-2002. He obtained his B.S.M.E. (1968), M.S.A.E. (1970), and Ph.D. (1973) degrees from the University of Missouri-Rolla (now MS&T). Following graduation, he worked for Du Pont at the Savannah River Laboratory in Aiken, SC, where he held various technical and managerial positions. In 1987 he became Chief Scientist of the Marquardt Company, an aerospace propulsion company located in Van Nuys, CA, where he worked on the National Aerospace Plane Program. Dr. Pepper co-founded and was CEO of Advanced Projects Research, Inc., an R&D company involved with development and application of computational methods in fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and environmental transport. He also taught undergraduate and graduate courses in fluid mechanics and computational methods at California State University-Northridge.

In 1992, Dr. Pepper joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 2001, he founded Nevada Energy and Environmental Systems, a consulting R&D company. He serves on the boards of six companies, and is a member of the Board of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation. In 2007, he was elected a member of the Cosmos Club, which is located in Washington, DC. Dr. Pepper has published over 300 technical papers on fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and environmental transport topics, and authored/co-authored six books on advanced numerical modeling and one on indoor air dispersion.

Dr. Pepper is a Life Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Fellow of Wessex Institute. Dr. Pepper is currently an editor of the J. of Thermodynamics, an editor of Thermopedia, was Associate Editor of the ASME J. of Heat Transfer from 2010-2013, and is Associate Editor of Computational Thermal Sciences. He was an Associate Editor of the AIAA J. Thermophysics and Heat Transfer from 1990-1997, and is a member of the editorial boards of Numerical Heat Transfer, Computational Thermal Sciences, International Computing in Engineering and Science, and Computational Methods in Science and Engineering. He founded and served as Chairman of the K-20 Committee on Computational Heat Transfer for ASME, and served as the Chairman of the K-12 Aerospace Heat Transfer Committee. He is a member of the AIAA Terrestrial Energy Technical Committee and past member of the AIAA Thermophysics Technical Committee. He received the 1996 Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award from UNLV for his research activities, and the 1996 and 2010 Distinguished Research Award from the UNLV College of Engineering.

In 2008, Dr. Pepper was awarded the Eric Reissner Medal for his work in computational methods. In 2010, he was awarded the Harry Reid Silver State Research Medal. He received the AIAA Distinguished Service Award, and in 2012 the AIAA Energy Systems Award. Dr. Pepper served as a member of the Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners from 2003-2005. He was appointed a member of the ASME Engineering Accreditation Committee and the ASME Board of Government Relations from 2005-2013. He was an ABET Commissioner from 2008-2013, and was appointed to the ABET Board of Directors in 2013. In 2009, he was elected a member of the MS&T Academy of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineers.