Lisa C. Olmos de Koo, MD, MBA joined the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle in 2016 as Associate Professor of Ophthalmology. Previously, she served as Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the Doheny Eye Institute and at the USC Roski Eye Institute of the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, CA.
Dr. Olmos is a native of Washington, DC, where she grew up in a bilingual household speaking Spanish as well as English. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Harvard University, where she was a member of the Varsity Swim Team as well as the Board of Directors of the Gilbert & Sullivan Society. During her undergraduate years, she spent summers conducting basic science research in ophthalmic genetics at the National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD. She then earned her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, along with an MBA from Rice University. She completed her internship at Georgetown University, with rotations at the Walter Reed Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) as well as at the LV Prasad Eye Hospital in Hyderabad, India. Following the completion of her ophthalmology residency and vitreoretinal fellowship at the world-renowned Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the University of Miami, in Miami, FL, she was selected to serve a one-year term as Chief Resident and Co-Director of Ocular Trauma at BPEI. One of the few implanting surgeons worldwide for the Argus II retinal prosthesis, Dr. Olmos previously served as Primary Investigator for the Argus II device clinical trials at USC. She has a special interest in ophthalmic education, currently serving as the Retina Fellowship Program Director at the UW, a position she previously held at USC. She is the editor of a quarterly column in Retina Specialist Magazine and serves as an adjunct professor of Ophthalmology at Seoul National University in South Korea. She sits on the Board of Directors and the Education Committee of the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS). She regularly lectures at both national and international meetings. Dr. Olmos lives in Seattle with her husband and two children. Her outside interests include competitive swimming, classical music, and opera.