Brian K. Kobilka

Honorary Degree Recipient

Doctor of Science
University of Minnesota Duluth, March 10, 2019

Brian K. Kobilka, professor of molecular and cellular physiology and Helene Irwin Fagan Chair in Cardiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, graduated with a bachelor’s degree of science in biology and chemistry in 1977 from the University of Minnesota Duluth.  He earned his medical degree from Yale University School of Medicine in 1981; served in an internal medicine fellowship at the Washington University School of Medicine in 1984; and as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at Duke University. He has worked at Stanford University since 1989.   Kobilka’s groundbreaking research has provided critical knowledge for scientists to comprehend the G-protein-coupled receptors’ (GPCR) structure and purpose. His remarkable achievements have had a compelling impact on the future course of biomedical science, health care, and development of targeted therapeutic strategies.  The findings of Kobilka’s research group have resulted in several hundred publications in prestigious scientific journals, including Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. In 2004, he was inducted into the Swenson College Academy of Science and Engineering; in 2011, he was named a member of the National Academy of Science; and in 2012, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Lefkowitz for discoveries that reveal the inner workings of the G-protein coupled receptors.  He is the recipient of other impressive awards, including the Nahum Prize, the 1994 Syntex Prize, the John Jacob Abel Award, a Howard Hughes Award, the 2004 Arthur Briggs Lectureship, and the 2005 Jacob Javits Award in Neurosciences.  

 

Biographies are as-of time of award presentation.