Dr. Pamela Wilkins Receives International Applied Research Award

Dr. Pamela Wilkins, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine since 2008, was honored at the 15th World Equine Veterinary Association (WEVA) Congress, held in Beijing, People’s Republic of China in April 2018. She received the Boehringer-Ingelheim WEVA Applied Research Award.

The award includes the opportunity to present an invited lecture. Dr. Wilkins spoke on “L-Lactate – What You Didn’t Know.”

“Pam’s lecture was fascinating and really captured the essence of utilizing science for the betterment of veterinary medicine,” noted Kate Savage, BVSc(Hons), MS, PhD, Diplomate ACVIM, the current president of the WEVA. “This was an historic occasion as Pam was the first woman to win this prestigious award.”

The mission of WEVA is to promote the health and welfare of horses, mules, and donkeys through the provision of continuing education of equine veterinarians and other involved in equid industries globally, especially in less economically developed countries.

In 2009 Dr. Wilkins was the first recipient of the Intervet/Schering-Plough International Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Equine Educator Award in honor of her great contributions to the equine program at the International Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Symposium. In 2016, she received the Ira M. Zaslow Distinguished Service Award from the Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society, the first equine veterinarian to receive that award.

Dr. Wilkins has organized three international workshops through the Dorothy Russell Havemeyer Foundation, which bring together a small group of scientists by invitation to address emerging areas of interest in equine health. The first, in 2006, was held in Ragusa, Italy, and focused on acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome. She also organized a second workshop on that topic held in Champaign, Ill., in 2010 and, with Dr. David Wong, a workshop on SIRS and sepsis in 2018.

Dr. Wilkins is double boarded, having earned diplomate status in the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (Large Animal) and the American College of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care. She earned a bachelor’s, veterinary degree, master’s, and PhD from Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y.

Her clinical interests include cardiovascular and respiratory problems of critically ill horses and bacterial blood cultures in foals and adult horses as indicators of disease severity and prognosis.

She has published more than 350 research articles, book chapters, editorials, and review papers. Dr. Wilkins’s residents or interns have won the annual large animal research abstract award at the International Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society annual meeting eight times over the past 12 years.