诺贝尔化学奖得主布莱恩·科比尔卡教授在港中大（深圳）第七届研究生毕业典礼上的讲话

香港中文大学（深圳）第七届研究生毕业典礼于11月26日上午在中央大道隆重举行。根据防疫要求，现场人员采取隔位就坐的方式参加典礼。此外，部分无法出席的毕业生亲友与社会各界人士通过云端观礼，共享喜悦时刻。

远在海外的2012年诺贝尔化学奖得主布莱恩·科比尔卡教授也通过视频送上给毕业生的祝贺和寄语。科比尔卡教授分享了他的科研生涯经历：“普通人也可以取得一定的成就，而我的成就可以归功于勤奋、坚韧、些许的运气，以及来自家庭、朋友和同事的大力支持。回顾我的职业生涯，我惊讶地发现自己常常处于天时地利人和的情况。”

科比尔卡教授还希望同学们能认识到当今世界正面临的诸多挑战，他希望毕业生中能有人勇挑重担，投身于解决贫困、气候变化等问题的事业。

*点击视频观看诺贝尔化学奖得主布莱恩·科比尔卡教授在香港中文大学（深圳）第七届研究生毕业典礼上的讲话

*Click to Watch Nobel Laureate Prof. Brian K. Kobilka's Commencement Speech at The Seventh Graduation Ceremony for Postgraduate Students of CUHK-Shenzhen 

2012诺贝尔化学奖获得者

布莱恩·科比尔卡教授

在港中大（深圳）第七届研究生毕业典礼上的讲话

尊敬的徐扬生校长、郑仲煊院长，亲爱的香港中文大学（深圳）的毕业生们。我很荣幸受邀为本次毕业典礼发表演讲。诸位在港中大（深圳）的学习生涯，为你们的未来奠定了坚实的基础。我今天想和大家分享的不是成功的金科玉律，但都是我获益良多的个人领悟。

我之所以受邀发表讲话，是因为我是一名诺贝尔奖得主。诺贝尔奖是对我在我热爱的事业上取得成就的认可。我很高兴能够得到同事们的褒奖与赞美。然而，我并不认为自己有什么出类拔萃的。在我看来，我迄今为止的职业生涯其实恰恰说明了，普通人也可以取得一定的成就，而我的成就可以归功于勤奋、坚韧、些许的运气以及来自家庭、朋友和同事的大力支持。

回顾我的职业生涯，我惊讶地发现自己常常处于天时地利人和的情况。我对自己的经历进行了剖析，试图为诸位毕业生找到一些启示。我相信，有四个因素在我的职业生涯中发挥了作用。第一，我找到了我的热情所在，找到了我喜欢做的事情，找到了我想追求和挑战的目标。第二，我遇到了人生的导师和楷模，引领我走过了职业生涯的不同阶段。第三，我认识到自己的优势和劣势，并学会了如何扬长避短。第四，我平衡了工作与生活，虽忙于学术，家庭却也很美满。

我人生中第一个榜样是我的父亲。我在明尼苏达州的利特尔福尔斯长大，当地人口仅有7000余人。我的童年平平无奇，但我的父母给予了我许多爱和支持。我的父母都没有接受过大学教育。父亲在当地开了一家小面包店，母亲则是家庭主妇，闲余在面包店兼职做做蛋糕装饰。记忆所及，我的父母从未给予我任何压力，没有要求我学业上要取得什么好成绩，也没有要求我必须投身于什么专业。我认为，这是父母赠予我的最重要的礼物：一块空白画布，让我随心所欲描绘出自己的画卷。随着年龄增长，我逐渐意识到父亲对我的生活产生了多大的影响。我钦佩他的职业道德，他与人打交道的技巧，他的幽默感，以及他对家庭的奉献。

父亲的面包店虽小，但运营起来一点也不简单，每周6天，每天24小时营业。面包店之所以能做起来，是因为店里种类繁多的优质烘焙食品。想要生意做下去，我父亲就必须胜任面包店的每一项工作，这样有人请病假时，他才能随时替班。从烤面包、算账、编制工资单到操作洗碗机，他什么都做。我相信父亲的成功，归功于其“十八般武艺样样精通”、良好的职业道德、幽默感，以及激励人们做到最好的能力。在管理我的研究小组时，我一直试图效仿他的经营方式。

我在很小的时候便立志要成为一名医生。在我的农村小社区里头，医生是最受人敬仰的职业，因为他们受过良好的教育，能够以其他人无法做到的方式帮助病人、老人和弱者。我本人也特别钦佩我的儿科医生。对医学的兴趣进而激发了我对科学的兴趣。1973年秋天，我进入明尼苏达大学德卢斯分校攻读生物化学，为上医学院做好准备。

在大学的头三个月里，我遇到了人生中的第二位榜样：生物学教授 康拉德·菲林。菲林教授鼓励本科生参与研究，并邀请我进入他的实验室做项目，研究发育生物学。当时，菲林教授的研究经费有限，且大部分时间都忙于教学，但他仍然对科研充满热情，懂得如何灵活地选择项目和充分利用有限的资源。很快，我发现自己也非常享受这个挑战   享受解决“小技术问题”和产生数据的过程。但是，我对研究课题本身并不十分满意，因为它主要以描述性研究为主。我喜欢这个过程，但对正在解决的特定问题并不感兴趣。

这时候的我已经对基础研究萌生了兴趣，我申请了一些研究生项目，也申请了多家医学院。我仍然憧憬着成为一名医生，心想如果没被医学院录取，那么就去读其他研究生课程好了。我没想到最后居然会有幸被耶鲁大学医学院录取。在耶鲁，所有的医学生都要写一篇基于原创研究的论文。我的论文主要研究的是轮状病毒的遗传多样性，这是导致儿童肠胃炎的一个常见原因。但这个课题在很大程度上依然是描述性的。幸运的是，我在耶鲁接触到了各个学科国际知名科学家的研究。我开始意识到，如果我能够投入足够的时间进行研究，我可以尝试从机理/分子细节层面回答一些重要的生物学问题。

其实在这个时候，我已经下定决心要以科研为终身职业了，但机会暂时还未到来。在巴恩斯医院的临床培训期间，我对重症监护医学特别感兴趣。被送入重症监护室的病人通常病情非常不稳定，需要紧急干预，常常要服用几种作用于不同G-蛋白偶联受体的药物。G-蛋白偶联受体是一大类膜蛋白受体的统称，后来也成为了我研究生涯的重点。作用于G-蛋白偶联受体的药物可以控制血压、心率以及缓解疼痛。

我对重症监护医学的兴趣驱使我申请了心脏病学的研究岗位。当时我对杜克大学的项目特别感兴趣，因为它的项目允许研究员先在基础研究实验室工作几年，然后再接着完成临床培训。

于是，我加入了罗伯特·莱夫科维茨的实验室，后来还和恩师一起获得了诺贝尔奖。当时，实验室正在对G蛋白偶联受体、肾上腺素受体进行开拓性研究，这给了我一个能在和心血管和重症监护医学方面相关的领域进行基础研究的机会。

我在莱夫科维茨实验室的头几个星期有点尴尬，对我的自尊心打击很大。曾经是“经验丰富的医学俊杰”的我，在一群才华横溢、见多识广的年轻科学家面前显得不值一提。莱夫科维茨实验室与我本科时的研究经历差异甚大，莱夫科维茨教授和菲林教授的指导风格也迥然不同。莱夫科维茨实验室里有20多名博士后和若干研究生，实验资金也非常充足。

在实验室头几个月里，我学习了一些基本技术，并承担了克隆β-2肾上腺素受体的研究课题。这恰好是我一直以来心心念念的那种课题，这是找出与我当时在重症监护室所研究的病人息息相关的G-蛋白偶联受体的特定的基因序列的良机，我也在实验中开始探寻该蛋白在分子水平上的工作机制。

在接下来的两年里，我努力学习分子生物学，但始终无法分离出想要的基因。莱夫科维茨教授不是分子生物学方面的专家，因此无法在实验细节方面给予太多帮助。但他是一位伟大的激励者，一直让我相信自己定能成功。他也教导我称：试错乃寻常事，重要的是我在这个过程中有所收获。

我们在1986年终于分离了β-2肾上腺素受体的基因。这是一个科学突破，为我们提供了第一块“拼图碎片”，没有它，便无法了解G-蛋白偶联受体工作原理的全貌。

此时，我已默默决定要继续探索“全貌”，探索这些蛋白如何在分子层面上结合起来。1986年，我找到了我的热情所在，并开始全力追求这个目标，这也奠定我接下来36年的研究方向。

1990年，我在斯坦福大学创立了我的实验室，继续研究这个非常具有挑战性的课题。17年后，2007年，我的实验室解析出了β-2肾上腺素受体的晶体结构，这是了解全貌的另一重要拼图碎片。2011年，我们解析了β -2肾上 腺素受体被激素激活并向细胞发送信号时的晶体结构，至此我们终于获得了“拼图”的“全貌”。我的科研成果，归功于众多才华横溢的学生和博士后的辛勤工作，以及与世界各地团队的合作。导师的指导、建议，与来自各个学科的同事的协作 ，让我受益匪浅。我特别庆幸的是，我的妻子在实验室里和我一起断断续续工作了30多年，为我提供了技术、智力和情感方面的支持。

我的研究生涯从各个角度来看都是非常有意义的：我发现了新的知识，曾与许多出色的、令人敬畏的学生和博士后共事，也与世界各地的科学家建立了友谊。也许更重要的是，我在忙碌的学术之余还能有时间与家人待在一起。

我的职业生涯最终走向了学术，走向了基础生物医学研究；而诸位在毕业后，可能会进入到各个不同的领域工作。当今世界正面临诸多挑战：各种病毒正在不断演变，随时可能引发下一次全球大流行；中东、非洲的战争似乎也还没有结束的迹象；朝鲜、俄罗斯的核对抗威胁也尚未解决；还有贫困问题，全球还有近8亿人无法获得足够的食物、药物；气候变化也是一个很重要的课题，甚至还可能是人类最大的挑战。也许我们有能力结束战争，阻止核对抗，减少世界贫困，但气候变化的影响却是不可逆转的。我们这一代人忽视了气候变化的威胁，把这个问题留给了你们这一代。应对气候变化问题需要跨学科的协作，需要有创造力的人共同努力，包括科学家、工程师、教育家和政治家。我希望诸位中能有人勇挑重担，投身于解决这些问题的事业。无论如何，我祝愿各位事业有成，前程似锦。

Nobel Laureate Prof. Brian K. Kobilka Commencement Speech at CUHK-Shenzhen The Seventh Graduation Ceremony for Postgraduate Students

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Dear President XU, Dean Cheng and graduates of The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen. It is my pleasure to address this graduation ceremony. Your studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen have laid the foundation for your future. While I don't have any words of wisdom that will guarantee success going forward, I can tell you what worked for me.

I'm here because I was awarded a Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize is a recognition that I have achieved a measure of success in doing what I love. It's very gratifying knowing that my colleagues appreciated my work enough to lobby on my behalf. However, I don't consider myself to be exceptional in any way.

I believe my career to date is an example of how an average individual can achieve a measure of success by a combination of factors that include hard work, resistance, an element of luck, and a great deal of help from family, friends, and colleagues.

When I look back at my career, I'm amazed at how often I've been in the right place at the right time with the right people. I've thought about my career and tried to find some message for today's graduates. I believe four factors have played a role in my career. First, I found my passion, something I loved to do and a challenging goal that I wanted to pursue. Second, I was able to find role models and mentors who provided guidance at different stages of my career. Third, I recognized my strengths and weaknesses. I found ways to leverage my strengths and accommodate for my weaknesses. Fourth, I had balance in my life. That is a fulfilling family life outside of my academic career.

My first role model was my father. Growing up in Little Falls, Minnesota, a town of about 7,000, I had a pretty unremarkable childhood. My parents were loving and supportive. Neither of my parents had a university education. My father owned a small bakery. My mother was a housewife and worked part-time at the bakery as a cake decorator. I don't remember any pressure from either of my parents for me to do well academically or to enter any particular profession. I consider this one of their most important gifts to me. They gave me a blank canvas to paint my own picture at my own pace. As I've grown older, I realized how much of an impact my father has had in my life. I admired his work ethic, his skills in dealing with people, his sense of humor and his devotion to his family.

His bakery was a relatively complex small business that operated 24 hours a day, six days a week. It prospered by producing large variety of excellent baked goods. To make all of this work, my father had to be able to do every job in the bakery because when someone called in sick, he had to be able to fill in day or night. He did everything from baking bread to managing accounting and payroll to running the dishwasher if necessary. I believe his success was due to his versatility, his work ethic, good humor, and the ability to motivate people to do their best. I've tried to emulate his approach to business in managing my research group.

I decided I wanted to become a doctor at a very early age. I saw that my small rural community held physicians in the highest regard. They were well educated and were able to help the sick, elderly and weak in ways that no one else could. I particularly admired my pediatrician. This interest in medicine led to an interest in science in general. I entered the University of Minnesota Duluth in the fall of 1973 to study biology and chemistry in preparation for medical school.

During my first quarter, I encountered my second most influential role model, my professor of biology Conrad Firling. Professor Firling encouraged undergraduates to get involved in research and welcomed me into his lab to work on projects and developmental biology.

While he had little funding for research and had to spend most of his time teaching, he was passionate about research and very creative in his choice of projects and the use of his limited resources. I soon found that I really enjoyed the challenge of working out relatively simple technical problems and generating data. At the same time, the research topic wasn't completely satisfying because it was primarily descriptive. I enjoyed the process but hadn't been very interested in the particular question being addressed.

In spite of my new found interest in basic research, I applied to medical schools as well as a few graduate programs. I still envisioned a career as a physician and the graduate programs were a backup option if I didn't get into medical school. I was very surprised when I received an acceptance from Yale. At Yale, all medical students were required to write a thesis based on original research. For my thesis project, I studied the genetic diversity of Rotaviruses, a common cause of gastroenteritis in children. Again, the project was largely descriptive and not very fulfilling. However, being at Yale I was exposed to research from internationally recognized scientists from a broad range of disciplines. I began to see that if I could devote enough time to research, I could try to answer important biological questions at a mechanistic level and in molecular detail.

It was at this time that I decided I wanted to explore research as a career. However, this opportunity would have to wait. During my clinical training at Barnes Hospital, I became particularly interested in intensive care medicine. Patients admitted to one of the intensive care units were typically very unstable, requiring urgent intervention, often with medications acting on several different G-protein-coupled receptors, a special class of proteins that would ultimately become the focus of my research career. Drugs acting on G-protein-coupled receptors were used to control blood pressure and heart rate and relieve pain.

My interest in intensive care medicine led me to apply to cardiology fellowships. I was particularly interested in a program at Duke University, which allowed fellows to work for several years in a basic research lab before completing their clinical training. Moreover the laboratory of Robert Lefkowitz at Duke, with whom I would ultimately share the Nobel Prize, was doing pioneering research on G-protein-coupled receptors that responded to adrenaline. This gave me the opportunity to explore basic research in an area relevant to cardiovascular and intensive care medicine.

My first few weeks in the Lefkowitz lab were a bit awkward and hard on my self-esteem. I went from being an experienced and competent physician to a novice among a group of very talented and experienced young scientists. The Lefkowitz lab was very different from my undergraduate research experience, and the Lefkowitz style of mentoring was very different from Conrad Firlings. There were over 20 postdoctoral fellows and a few graduate students. The lab was very well funded.

During the first months in the lab while learning basic techniques, I became aware of the effort to clone the gene for the Beta-2 adrenergic receptor. This was exactly the kind of project that I was looking for. It was a chance to isolate the gene for one of the G-protein-coupled receptors. I had been targeting in patients in the intensive care unit.

It was a chance to begin to learn how one of these proteins worked at the molecular level.

For the next two years I struggled to learn molecular biology and all of my efforts to isolate the gene failed. While Professor Lefkowitz was not experienced in molecular biology and couldn't help me with experimental details, he was a great motivator and gave me the impression that he believed I would succeed. He taught me that it was okay to try and fail as long as I learned something in the process.

We finally succeeded in isolating the gene for the beta-2 receptor in 1986. This was a scientific breakthrough that gave us the first piece of the puzzle that would ultimately reveal how G-protein-coupled receptors work.

I knew at the time I wanted to see the whole picture, how all of the proteins fit together in molecular detail. In 1986, I found my passion and began pursuing the goal that would form the basis for my research for the next 36 years.

In 1990, I started my lab at Stanford and continued to work on this very challenging project. 17 years later in 2007, my lab obtained the crystal structure of the beta-2 adrenergic receptor, providing another important piece of the puzzle. In 2011, we were able to complete the puzzle with the crystal structure of the beta-2 receptor activating its cytoplasmic signaling partner. I owe these scientific achievements to the hard work of many talented students and postdoctoral fellows and collaborations from around the world. I have benefited from mentorship, advice and collaborations with colleagues from a broad spectrum of disciplines. I have been particularly privileged that my wife Tong Sun has worked with me in the lab on and off for more than 30 years, providing technical, intellectual, and emotional support.

My career in research has been very rewarding from several perspectives, discovering new knowledge, working with many brilliant and often intimidating students and postdoctoral fellows, developing friendships with scientists throughout the world. And perhaps most important, having the flexibility to spend time with my family.

While my career path led to basic biomedical research in an academic setting, yours may lead to in a different direction. The world is facing many challenges, including the evolution of viruses that may spark the next global pandemic. Wars in the Middle East and Africa that don't appear to have an end in sight. The threat of nuclear confrontation with North Korea and Russia. Poverty...Nearly 800 million people don't have enough to eat or medicines for treatable diseases. And perhaps the most important, climate change. This is perhaps our greatest challenge. While we may end wars, prevent a nuclear confrontation and reduce world poverty, climate change may be irreversible. My generation has ignored the threat of climate change, leaving the problem to your generation. Addressing climate change will require concerted effort from creative individuals from different disciplines, including scientists, engineers, educators, and politicians. I hope that some of you will consider careers that will help address these challenges. In closing, I wish you success in whatever career path you choose.

-END-

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