Dr. Pamela Ko is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists (ACVO) since 2019. While her career path has certainly been far from linear, her endless curiosity and vision led her to merge an engineering background with a passion for the care and treatment of eye diseases in animals.

Dr. Ko received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Boston University. She then relocated to Southern California and embarked on a successful, decade-long career in the aerospace industry designing digital signal processors and database systems. Dr. Ko went on to obtain a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Michigan State College of Veterinary Medicine, after which she spent time at multiple small animal practices in Southern California. She then decided to pursue a joint clinical and pre-clinical ophthalmic commercial research ophthalmology internship in Irvine, California. As part of the four-year comparative veterinary ophthalmology residency curriculum in San Diego, California, Dr. Ko continued to focus on translational research and biomedical science.

After completing her residency in 2017, Dr. Ko practiced veterinary medicine in Arizona and Southern California for many years. She is honored that several of her research efforts have been recognized by professional organizations. In 2016, she was awarded a travel fellowship from the International Society for Eye Research (ISER) to present her study of pre-clinical transscleral diffusion for sustaining drug delivery in Tokyo, Japan. In 2015, her residency research presentation was selected as a “hot topic” of the year by the Association for Research and Vision Ophthalmology (ARVO). She also received a travel grant from the International Society of Clinical and Electrophysiology of Vision to present her optic nerve neuropathy research in Perth, Australia in 2011.

In her spare time, Dr. Ko volunteers her services at a local zoo, performing wildlife and zoo animal eye consultations and surgeries.