Meet the Keynote Speakers

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  Eric Elster CAPT, MC, USN (Ret.)

  Dean, School of Medicine Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

  Eric Elster, MD, FACS, FRCSEng (Hon.), CAPT, MC, UNS (Ret.) is Dean of the School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD. He serves as Executive Co-Chair of the Military Health System Strategic Partnership American College of Surgeons.

  Previously, Dr. Elster was the Chair and Norman M. Rich Professor of Surgery for the USU Department of Surgery and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He completed a general surgery residency at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD.

  During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Dr. Elster served as ship’s surgeon aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, while stationed in the Persian Gulf. Subsequently, he completed a solid organ transplantation as well as transplant in General Surgery fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where he directed a translational research program focused on the development of improved diagnostics and therapies for serious traumatic injuries, transplantation, and advanced operative imaging.

  Dr. Elster was last deployed as a surgeon and director of Surgical Services at the NATO Role 3 Military Medical Unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Dr. Elster has published over 200 scientific manuscripts in leading journals and has received numerous research grants across all aspects of surgery.

• 

  Kjell N. Lindgren, MD

  Former Astronaut, NASA

  Dr. Kjell Lindgren is a physician-astronaut, residency trained in emergency and aerospace medicine. He was born in Taiwan, grew up in the UK and earned his undergraduate degree from the US Air Force Academy. He earned a Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Colorado and trained in emergency medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, MN.

  Dr. Lindgren joined NASA as a flight surgeon in 2007 and was subsequently selected into the Astronaut Corps in 2009. He is a veteran of two International Space Station missions. In 2015, he launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Russian Soyuz rocket to join Expeditions 44/45 on the ISS where he served as the Crew Medical Officer, executed more than a hundred different scientific experiments, and conducted two spacewalks.

  In 2022, Dr. Lindgren served as Commander of the SpaceX Crew-4 Dragon mission to the ISS, to join Expedition 67. He has spent a cumulative 311 days in low earth orbit. Dr. Lindgren currently serves as the Deputy Director of NASA’s Flight Operations Directorate.