Image of the Week: Nobel Laureate Brian Kobilka celebrates with colleagues and friends

On Wednesday, Brian Kobilka, MD, professor and chair of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and his mentor Robert Lefkowitz, MD, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Duke University, were awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Kobilka and Lefkowitz won the award for their work on G-protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs.

This image was captured during an afternoon celebration for Kobilka held in the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine on the Stanford campus. A crowd of colleagues, post-docs and students filled the foyer to congratulate him. In the photo, William Weis, PhD, who has collaborated with Kobilka since the mid-1990s, toasts him on his accomplishment. Weis shared the following comments in a recent medical school release:

Brian Kobilka is great. He’s always thinking about every possible approach to try to crack the problem. He’s really creative and really focused but an incredibly nice person; incredibly low-key and humble. It’s an absolute pleasure to work with him.

Photo by Linda Cicero/Stanford News Service