Tsinghua Guest Professor Brian K. Kobilka Wins 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Scientists Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, announced Staffan Normark, Permanent Secretary of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday.

They were awarded "for groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family of such receptors: G-protein-coupled receptors," said the academy in a statement, adding that the studies by Lefkowitz and Kobilka are crucial for understanding how G-protein-coupled receptors function.

Kobilka was born in 1955 in Little Falls MN. USA and got his Master Degree from Yale University in 1981. He is Professor of Medicine and Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University in CA, USA. He was appointed Guest Professor of Tsinghua on April 16, 2012.

Photo by Yu Zhifei