Dr. Robert Lefkowitz gave the commencement address for the Class of 2018 commencement on May 29, 2018. Lefkowitz is the James B. Duke Professor of Medicine and professor of biochemistry and chemistry at the Duke University Medical Center. He has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1976. Beginning in the late 1960s, he and his group spent 15 years developing techniques for radioligand binding, solubilization, purification and reconstitution of the four adrenergic receptors known at the time. Most recently, he has been applying the tools of structural biology to understand biased signaling at atomic level resolution.
Lefkowitz has received numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Science, the Shaw Prize, the Albany Prize and the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studies of G-protein coupled receptors. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1988, the Institute of Medicine in 1994 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988.
