Born and raised in Canada, Dr. Kris Lehnhardt completed his Hon. B.Sc. in Bio-Medical Sciences from the University of Guelph in 1999. He then obtained his M.D. (2003) and Emergency Medicine specialization (2008) from the University of Western Ontario. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and a Diplomate of the American Board of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Lehnhardt is currently working in Washington, DC, where he is an Assistant Professor and Attending Emergency Physician at the George Washington University. There, he also serves as the Co-Director for the Fellowship in Extreme Environmental Medicine and as the Director of the "Introduction to Human Health in Space" graduate course.Dr. Lehnhardt has long had an interest in aerospace medicine with the goal of becoming an astronaut. He has trained with the flight surgeons at the NASA Kennedy Space Center and at Defence and Research Development Canada. He has completed the Space Studies Program at the International Space University in Barcelona, Spain (2008).
He was a highly competitive applicant and interviewee in the last Canadian Space Agency astronaut selection campaign, and he was recently a finalist for the Space Medicine Association Jeff Myers Young Investigator Award. He currently holds a private pilot license in both Canada and the USA and is a certified advanced open water SCUBA diver. Dr. Lehnhardt is a Major in the Health Services reserves of the Royal Canadian Air Force.