Rick Searfoss is a professional motivational speaker emphasizing leadership, teamwork, innovation, creativity and expertise. Former astronaut Rick Searfoss continues to stay right in the middle in some of today's most innovative leading-edge projects: Vice President of the Zero Gravity Corporation, XCOR Aerospace Corporation flight test, leader and spokesperson for numerous space entrepreneurial ventures.

Rick Searfoss commanded a seven person crew on the STS-90 Neurolab mission which launched on April 17, 1998. During the 16-day Spacelab flight the crew served as both experiment subjects and operators for 26 individual life science experiments focusing on the effects of microgravity on the brain and nervous system. STS-90 was the last and most complex of the twenty-five Spacelab missions NASA has flown. Neurolab's scientific results will have broad applicability both in preparing for future long duration human space missions and in clinical applications on Earth. Completed in 256 orbits, STS-90 landed at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on May 3, 1998.

Neurolab was a Spacelab module mission focusing on the effects of microgravity on the nervous system. The goals of Neurolab were to study basic research questions and to increase the understanding of the mechanisms responsible for neurological and behavioral changes in space. Specifically, experiments studied the adaptation of the vestibular system and space adaptation syndrome, the adaptation of the central nervous system and the pathways which control the ability to sense location in the absence of gravity, and the effect of microgravity on a developing nervous system. The mission was a joint venture of six space agencies and seven US research agencies. Investigator teams from nine countries conducted 26 studies in the microgravity environment of space. Other agencies participating in this mission included six institutes of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research, as well as the space agencies of Canada, France, Germany, and Japan, and the European Space Agency.

Rick Searfoss, Colonel, USAF Retired, former astronaut, is a distinguished teamwork and leadership expert speaker who has piloted or commanded three highly successful space missions. As a mission commander, he is also one of less than a hundred people in history ever chosen to command a human space mission.