The VVMA is proud to announce that our Keynote Speaker for the 2013 Virginia Veterinary Conference will be Richard Linnehan, DVM.

After graduating from The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1985, Dr. Linnehan entered private veterinary practice and was later accepted to a two-year joint internship in zoo animal medicine and comparative pathology at the Baltimore Zoo and The Johns Hopkins University. Following his internship, he was commissioned as a captain in the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps, where he became chief clinical veterinarian for the U.S. Navy's Marine Mammal Program.

Selected by NASA in 1992, he completed the year-long astronaut candidate training qualifying him for space shuttle flight assignments as a mission specialist and flew his first mission in 1996 on STS-78, the Life Sciences and Microgravity Spacelab mission. A veteran of four space flights aboard space shuttles Columbia and Endeavour, including visits to the Hubble Space Telescope and International Space Station, Dr. Linnehan's mission experience also includes six EVAs (spacewalks) totaling 42 hours and 11 minutes.

Dr. Linnehan will open the 2013 Virginia Veterinary Conference with his keynote address, "An Astronaut and Veterinarian’s Perspective from Space.”