Milner, who is board certified in both small animal internal medicine and in oncology, will be in charge of the hospital's day to day operations. He replaced Michael Schaer, D.V.M., in the position when Schaer became special assistant to the dean.

A 1980 graduate of the University of Pretoria's veterinary college, Milner spent two years as a military veterinarian and practiced general medicine for 10 years. He returned to the University of Pretoria in 1993, where he became a tenured associate professor specializing in small animal medicine. He then studied the application of radionuclides for the treatment of bone cancer and received his master's degree in medicine from the University of Pretoria in 1997.

Milner joined UF's veterinary faculty in 2001 to develop the oncology program and helped create a separate oncology service in 2005. A medical/radiation oncologist and a surgical oncologist soon joined the group, which remains one of the hospital's busiest services.

He was associate chairman of the department of small animal clinical sciences in 2008 and was oncology service chief until assuming his new position in July.

Milner's research interest is in the field of melanoma vaccines and target radiotherapy of sarcomas. He developed a vaccine for canine melanoma which is currently undergoing clinical trials.