Richard Linnehan
2006 All College Convocation Guest Speaker - Dr. Richard Linnehan
Dr. Richard Linnehan
NASA Astronaut
Kind Hearts, Caring Hands Day
Friday, April 21, 2006 - 11 a.m.
College of Veterinary Medicine
Frick Auditorium, Mosier Hall
NASA astronaut Richard Linnehan will give this year's all-college convocation at the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Kind Hearts, Caring Hands Day, April 21, at 11:00 a.m. in Frick Auditorium in Mosier Hall. He will also give the keynote speech at the White Coat Ceremony later that day.
Linnehan, an astronaut and veterinarian, has been with NASA for 14 years and has flown three missions in space aboard the space shuttle “Columbia.”
His first mission in the summer of 1996 was the first mission to combine a full microgravity studies agenda and a comprehensive life sciences payload. During Linnehan's second mission two years later he participated in experiments on the effects of microgravity on the brain and nervous systems. Those studies will be modeled by the International Space Station. During his most recent mission in 2002, Linnehan and a teammate performed three spacewalks totaling 21 hours to service the Hubble Space Telescope. During the three space missions, Linnehan has logged more than 43 days in space.
In an interview before the Hubble mission Linnehan said, “It will be the most important thing I can see me doing, upgrading this instrument and hopefully making it a better instrument – and allowing us to learn that much more.”
Linnehan received his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from The Ohio State University in 1985 and has honorary doctorates of science from the University of New Hampshire and Suffolk University. He is an adjunct assistant professor at the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
Before being selected as a mission specialist by NASA, Linnehan worked in private practice and completed a two-year joint internship in zoo animal medicine and comparative pathology at the Baltimore Zoo and The John Hopkins University. He was also chief clinical veterinarian for the U.S. Navy’s Marine Mammal program at the Navel Ocean Systems Center in San Diego, Calif. There, he initiated research in the areas of cetacean and pinniped anesthesia, orthopedics, drug pharmacokinetics and reproduction.
“Meeting Dr. Linnehan will be a great opportunity for our students, faculty and staff. He is a living example of how veterinary medicine can be a doorway to all sorts of careers, Dean Ralph Richardson said. “Dr. Linnehan’s presentations will be a ‘must-see’ for those interested in veterinary medicine, biology and our country’s space program.”