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Meet Dr. Matt Marinkovich – Our 17th Biannual Special Species Symposium Keynote Speaker!

  By Maison Scheuer • March 14, 2023

The Zoo and Wildlife Society (ZAWS) at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine is so excited to welcome Dr. Matt Marinkovich as the keynote speaker for the 17th biannual Special Species Symposium, the purpose for which is to foster students’ educational experience related to non-traditional species through a series of lectures and hands-on labs led by experts in the fields of wildlife, exotics, zoo, and conservation medicine. Dr. Marinkovich obtained his veterinary degree from Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in 2014, and once held a position on the ZAWS E-board planning the exact same symposium where he will now give his keynote address, “From LH2 to the San Diego Zoo: Lessons from a Journey into Zoo Medicine.”

One of the many aspects Dr. Marinkovich valued about his education at Cornell University was the depth and breadth. He acknowledged some students’ desire to specialize and narrow their education to non-traditional species but confirmed that so much more can come from a diverse education. In fact, Dr. Marinkovich confessed that he still frequently integrates knowledge that he gained during his fourth-year large animal internal medicine rotation into his treatment plans at the San Diego Zoo. “A diverse education not only offers ample opportunities to gain good doctoring skills, but it allows one the opportunity to fall in love with a field of study that perhaps was never considered prior to vet school.” Afterall, in zoological medicine, he states, “everything is applicable.”

Keeping an open mind has always been important to Dr. Marinkovich because, “you may become enamored by something you never knew you would.” In fact, Dr. Marinkovich was a natural history major in undergrad, and it was not until he obtained a job as a veterinary assistant that he fell in love with medicine. When asked about what motivated him to pursue a career in veterinary medicine, Dr. Marinkovich remembered being blown away by all the problem-solving veterinarians get to do on a daily basis. He also latched onto the idea that veterinary medicine would not only enable him to help animals, but the people who interact with them as well. From studying zoonotic disease, to counseling owners through a clinical case, Dr. Marinkovich enjoyed how much veterinary medicine would allow him to support human and animal welfare.

Although Dr. Marinkovich kept his options open throughout vet school, he always had a special interest for non-domestic species. He specifically had a passion for wildlife and conservation and following an opportunity to spend a summer with a pathologist at SeaWorld, he knew that zoological medicine was the career for him. The more exposure to exotic species that Dr. Marinkovich got, the more he realized he enjoyed the challenge of coming up with creative solutions to manage their health. Dr. Marinkovich also admired zoological medicine as a student because he recognized that it would provide a chance to stimulate a passion for conservation among his community while still managing chronic disease, as well as high-pace, high-intensity clinical cases.

While Dr. Marinkovich eventually obtained his dream job working as a Clinical Veterinarian at the San Diego Zoo, a place where his grandparents took him since he could walk, he wants to be transparent that his road to success was not a straight shot. He did not match with a zoo residency the first time he applied, which he acknowledged as part of his triumph. Instead of becoming discouraged, Dr. Marinkovich viewed this as an opportunity, one that he took to complete two internships at the Animal Medical Center, the world’s largest non-profit animal hospital. Through his rotating small animal internship, Dr. Marinkovich gained clinical experience and client communication skills that he still uses today. However, it was not until his second internship in emergency and critical care medicine that Dr. Marinkovich was pushed out of his comfort zone, where he admittedly learned and grew the most, and gained confidence in himself as a veterinarian. Through this high-pressure experience, with his feet to the fire, Dr. Marinkovich realized that he had what it would take to be a zoological veterinarian.

Excitingly, and with persistence, Dr. Marinkovich matched with the UC Davis San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Sea World Zoo Residency, an intense 3-year program offering clinical competency in exotic, zoo, aquatic, and wildlife medicine. During his first year, he spent a lot of time at the Sacramento Zoo and the Marine Mammal Center where he got to study lactate clearance in stranded pinnipeds. His second year was spent with some of the 12,000 rare and endangered species living within the 100-acre wildlife park at the San Diego Zoo, as well as the wide array of aquatic animals cared for by SeaWorld. During his third and final year, he used his cultivated knowledge to provide innovative, state of the art care for the magnificent animals at the San Diego Safari Park, including elephants, rhinos, and cheetahs.

After completing his residency, Dr. Marinkovich was pleased to stay at the San Diego Zoo working as a relief veterinarian. Then, much to his delight, he was offered a full-time position at the San Diego Zoo, where he expects to stay for life. Some may wonder how someone could be so willing to stay in the same work environment for so long, but no day is ever the same for Dr. Marinkovich at the San Diego Zoo. There are still times when he is presented with a new problem or a new species, offering an opportunity to learn something new every day. The constant intellectual stimulation offered by the San Diego Zoo is complemented by the excellent team of veterinarians who work there. When asked what he most enjoys about his job, Dr. Marinkovich mentioned the inspiring group of veterinary professionals that he gets to work with every day who support one another’s growth and wellbeing. Furthermore, he appreciates how interdisciplinary and collaborative the efforts of the San Diego Zoo are, recalling a time when the veterinary team worked closely with human doctors to resolve a complicated renal abscess on an older beloved orangutan.

 

Another aspect of the San Diego Zoo that Dr. Marinkovich greatly appreciates is the myriad opportunities to get involved with conservation initiatives. He has been all over the world, investing time and energy towards making it a more sustainable place to live, for both humans and animals. The San Diego Zoo has 8 different conservation hubs located throughout the world that share responsibilities such as disease investigation, biodiversity banking, and recovery ecology. In an uplifting effort through a captive breeding and release program designed by the San Diego Zoo, Dr. Marinkovich and his team are helping save the San Clemente loggerhead shrike, an endangered passerine bird. Dr. Marinkovich tells readers to stay tuned for more exciting conservation stories offered during his keynote address at the Special Species Symposium!

Dr. Marinkovich is thrilled to come back to Cornell University and looks forward to seeing how it has changed since graduating in 2014. He is really looking forward to reconnecting with his vet school mentors, namely Dr. Noha Abou-Madi and Dr. Karen Kerns, who both play such an important role in the lives of students interested in pursuing zoological medicine. But, perhaps most notably, Dr. Marinkovich is eager to interact with vet students who share his drive to make a difference in the world through the lens of veterinary medicine. It was not that long ago that Dr. Marinkovich was an aspiring zoo vet like many of us, so he recognizes the stress and hard work that goes into actualizing that dream. Through his lecture, he hopes to convey excitement, ambition, and peace of mind, being a huge proponent for mental health in veterinary medicine. I felt so inspired by Dr. Marinkovich in just the short while I got to spend interviewing him for the WildLIFE Blog, an interaction I consider myself lucky to have had. Be sure to register for the 17th biannual Special Species Symposium so that you can relish in his journey towards becoming a Clinical Veterinarian at the San Diego Zoo, a story that will fill you with admiration, motivation, and awe.

 

 

Maison Scheuer is the 2022-2023 WildLIFE Blog Editor and a proud member of Cornell ZAWS. Her passions lie at the intersection of veterinary medicine and wildlife conservation. She loves to travel and has spent time in Canada, Thailand, Alabama, Belize, and Honduras where she studied Columbian ground squirrels, elephant conservation, wildlife rehabilitation, and veterinary medicine. Though particularly interested in One Health and international medicine, she has also discovered a love for small animal medicine through her experience working as a veterinary technician at a full-service exotics and small animal private practice.

From Bees to Big Cats at the Special Species Symposium 2019

  By Loren Lassiter • April 11, 2019

A banner welcomes students to the Symposium

Conservation, exotics, and wildlife are increasingly popular fields within veterinary medicine and last week Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine hosted the Special Species Symposium to shine a light on various topics within these fields. The Special Species Symposium brought speakers from a variety of backgrounds as well as students from Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Montreal together to discuss zoo, exotic, and wildlife medicine.

Dr. Robin Radcliffe presents about bee health

Topics discussed ranged from utilizing pathology in conservation to antibiotic therapy in pocket pets to marine mammal rehabilitation. Students also had the opportunity to participate in a number of wet labs including invertebrate clinical skills, darting, turtle shell repair, and avian orthopedics. The symposium opened on Saturday with a lecture from Dr. Robin Radcliffe about honey bee health and the developing role of veterinarians in honey bee management. Dr. Radcliffe discussed the agricultural and economic value of bees and the new federal regulations that require veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics for bee colonies. For the rest of the symposium we got to choose which speakers we wanted to listen to. I listened to Dr. Karen Terio’s lecture, where she discussed the importance of pathology in conservation and how it contributes to species health. She finished by advising those aspiring to work in conservation to develop a skill and use that to market themselves.

Dr. Terio was followed by Dr. Peter DiGeronimo, who gave a lecture on marine mammal rehabilitation and how it affects ocean health. He described how rehabilitation can have conservation, scientific, and social benefits. Wildlife rehabilitators have the most contact with free-ranging wildlife, and can act as sentinels to monitor emerging diseases arising in wild populations. This is especially important in species with low population numbers because the individuals that are able to be returned to the wild have even greater impacts on the species as a whole. He emphasized the role that wildlife rehabilitation centers can play in providing data about various species that researchers may not be able to gather. Finally, he stressed the importance of researchers establishing good relationships with rehabilitators to break down the distrust that some have regarding the motives of researchers.

One of the last lectures on Saturday was on the care and conservation of large felids, given by Dr. Michael McEntire. He discussed various aspects of managing large felids in captivity such as the necessary housing requirements,  safety protocols, and restraint techniques. He emphasized the importance of behavioral restraint which involves training animals in certain ways to make them easier to handle and decrease the associated stress. For example, you can train them to present their tails for blood draws or their flanks for injections, and in this way avoid having to anesthetize them for what should be relatively simple procedures. Then Dr. McEntire transitioned to felid diseases such as vitamin A deficiency, myelopathy in cheetahs, and canine distemper virus in lions. Other lectures given on Saturday included an overview of amphibian diagnostics, a session of clinical updates from the Janet L. Swanson Wildlife Health Center, and an update on emerging infectious diseases in reptiles.

Demonstration of how to handle invertebrates, such as the tarantula pictured

During the Saturday afternoon lab sessions, I participated in the invertebrate clinical skills lab. The lab was split between arachnids and marine invertebrates. We learned proper handling techniques of arachnids and how to identify common health problems such as dehydration, or how to ensure the tarantula is able to molt appropriately. We also learned ways a clinician could correct these issues or advise an owner in correcting them. Additionally, we were taught proper anesthesia protocols for lobsters and learned some necessary anatomy for horseshoe crabs and various bivalves including oysters and clams.

Attending students from all schools pose after the first day of the symposium

The highlight of Saturday, and the symposium in general, was the keynote speaker Dr. Susan Bartlett. Dr. Bartlett is a veterinarian for the Wildlife Conservation Society and she discussed her path to getting that position. She explained how she dealt with various hurdles on her journey, such as having to reapply to veterinary school after not getting in the first time. She emphasized the importance of persistence and shared an anecdote of how she worked at a zoo scooping poop in order to gain elephant experience. Her determination eventually gave her the opportunity to accompany a research team and travel internationally to study elephants. Additionally, Dr. Bartlett discussed how the TV show, The Zoo, has helped to improve public perception of the Bronx Zoo as it sheds light on the amount of work and care zoo professionals dedicate to their animals.  

Dr. Noha Abou-Madi discusses EEHV

The next day of lectures and labs was just as interesting as the first. It opened with a talk by Katy Payne about whale and elephant communication. She discussed how novel it was to discover in the 1960’s that whales actually sing and the work she has done to analyze these songs. Male whales in the same area sing very similar songs that change every breeding season, and even throughout the season. It is theorized that female whales prefer inventiveness which drives the evolution of the songs over time. Dr. James Morrissey followed with a talk comparing GI stasis and obstruction in rabbits. He taught those in attendance how to identify one versus the other, and the best way to treat these differing conditions. Dr. Lauren Powers of Carolina Veterinary Specialists, went through how to effectively perform a neurological exam on avian patients. She played videos demonstrating different tests and explained what abnormal results might indicate. Finally, Dr. Noha Abou-Madi discussed the tragic occurrence of Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (EEHV) and how it manifested in zoos over 20 years ago. This virus can be devastating and has unfortunately killed a number of baby, mostly Asian, elephants. Dr. Abou-Madi detailed her role in researching and trying to culture EEHV. She also explained the current preemptive protocols in place that attempt to identify when an elephant calf contracts the virus, so treatment can begin before clinical signs emerge. She ended on a message of hope, because even though the virus is still unable to be cultured, there is increasing success in saving calves who contract the virus and research is ongoing to potentially develop a vaccine.

Students are shown the frames from a beekeeper’s hives

In the afternoon, I attended two labs. The first was a tour of the Cornell Bee Labs and the second was an avian orthopedics lab. The tour of the Bee Lab fit in nicely with Dr. Radcliffe’s Saturday lecture. We were able to see more in depth how beekeepers manage their hives and some of the problems that can occur. In the avian orthopedics lab, we learned how to place an intraosseus catheter, and how to set both a humeral and femoral fracture in birds.

Overall, the Special Species Symposium was an incredible opportunity to hear from top professionals in the fields of zoo, exotics, and wildlife medicine. It also provided a unique opportunity to network not just with Cornell students with similar interests, but also with students from other schools.

 

Cornell hosts the Special Species Symposium every 2 years.  For more information on the 2019 Special Species Symposium, visit the website here.

 

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Climate change and conservation at Special Species Symposium 2017

  By Wildlife Blog Editor • April 26, 2017 Uncategorized

Dr. Jan Ramer giving her keynote lecture on her work with Gorilla Doctors, conservation medicine, and One Health.

Last week, Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine hosted the biennial Special Species Symposium.  Over 100 attendees, including veterinary students, veterinarians and vet school faculty, PhD students, and also members of the general public gathered at Cornell for a weekend of lectures and labs about the biology, medicine, and conservation of “special species.”  This year’s theme was climate change, and its impact on animal biology, life history, and survival.  The event concluded with a banquet at the Lab of Ornithology, a silent auction, and a talk by Dr. Jan Ramer.

A veterinary student practices darting wildlife for sedation, with Dr. Noha Abou-Madi at the 2017 Special Species Symposium.

Veterinary students at the Lab of Ornithology during the 2017 Special Species Symposium banquet.

2017 Special Species Symposium organizers. Top row: Erika First, Angela Jin, Dr. Noha Abou-Madi, Will Fugina. Middle Row: Kayla Woodlock, Eden Stark, Jonah Zitsman. Front row: Caitlin Adams, Kristina Ceres, Isabel Jimenez, Zack Dvornicky-Raymond.

Below is a letter written by the 2017 Special Species Symposium Coordinator, DVM/PhD student Kristina Ceres, and Registration Chair Isabel Jimenez:

The Special Species Symposium began in 1991 as the “Zoo and Wildlife Symposium” at Cornell University.  The leaders of the Cornell Zoo and Wildlife Society (ZAWS) felt there was a need to supplement the veterinary education with material related to wildlife and exotics so that graduates would be more prepared to work with those species. In second issue of the 1991 Veterinary Viewpoints newspaper, the then president of the Zoo and Wildlife Society, Dr. Karen Kearns ’93 said, “The symposium is our way of providing information that is taught in the veterinary medical curriculum. We also hope that interest in the symposium will show there is a need to increase the number of courses on wild and exotic animals offered in the curriculum”.

The SSS is a student-led and faculty-supported symposium, the goal of which is to supplement our veterinary curriculum and provide students from near and far with the opportunity to learn more about these amazing species.  Since 1991, when Dr. Kearns planned the first Special Species Symposium, the Symposium has expanded into a yearly event in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Over the past 26 years, our curriculum at Cornell University has also expanded to include varied coursework and opportunities to explore wildlife, zoo and exotic medicine within the school, hospital, Wildlife Health Center, Wildlife Health Initiative, and abroad through Expanding Horizons and Engaged Cornell.

We chose climate change for the theme for the 2017 Special Species Symposium because we recognize the need for veterinarians to play an important role in helping wildlife, domestic species and humans thrive in a warming climate. Climate change affects all living creatures on Earth; from changing habitats to changing disease transmission patterns, a warming climate provides important and difficult challenges for veterinarians to tackle for years to come. Although the term has become commonplace, climate change is causing very real changes to wildlife and wild spaces, and we want to shed light on what veterinarians and wildlife biologists are doing to intervene. We hope that as the years go on, the SSS will continue to inspire students to pursue careers that involve “special species” and help participants become climate conscious veterinarians.

This symposium would not have been possible without our sponsors, speakers, lab facilitators, volunteers, the previous coordinators of the Special Species Symposium at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, the Cornell Zoo and Wildlife Society executive board, and our wonderful faculty mentor, Dr. Abou-Madi. Thank you for joining us this weekend to celebrate Earth Day, conservation, and a bright future for our planet.

Sincerely,

Kristina Ceres
2017 Special Species Symposium Coordinator
DVM/PhD Candidate, Cornell University

Isabel Jimenez
2017 Special Species Symposium Registration Chair
DVM Candidate Class of 2019, Cornell University

Symposium: Register for Special Species Symposium 2017

  By Wildlife Blog Editor • March 18, 2017

The logo for the 2017 Special Species Symposium at Cornell University, created by Eden Stark and Isabel Jimenez, DVM students ’19.

The Special Species Symposium is a weekend-long event bringing together students and professionals interested in veterinary medicine and animal management as it relates to so-called “special species,” including zoo animals, wildlife, exotics, and pocket pets.  Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine and University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine host the event in alternating years.

This year the theme is climate change. Our program will address how climate change is altering species survival, and what veterinarians are doing and can do to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. We will also present clinical lectures given by Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine clinicians.

Learn more and register for the conference at the Special Species Symposium website.