Carla’s interest lies in the unique biological adaptations of species to face extreme conditions such as those occurring during hibernation. As a Master’s student at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology in Vienna, Carla focused on the maintenance of cardiac function during hibernation during which temperature plays a critical role. At low body temperature (<20°C), hibernators maintain cardiac contractility and function, while non-hibernator hearts experience severe arrhythmias and ventricular fibrillation, leading to cardiac arrest. During her Master, Carla demonstrated that (1) an increase in the activity of cardiac sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium ATPase (SERCA), a key protein pump ensuring cardiac function, occurs in Syrian hamster heart during hibernation, which in turns (2) correlates with an increase in Linoleic acid in sarcoplasmic reticulum phospholipid membranes. These findings highlight the significant relationship between phospholipid composition, SERCA activity and body temperature, as well as SERCA as key enzyme in preventing heart failure during hibernation. Thereafter, Carla became gradually interested in understanding the central molecular mechanisms behind hibernation, and pursued in 2012 a PhD in Biochemistry and Neuroscience at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Since 2019, Carla joined Dr. Hewett’s laboratory at Syracuse University as an NIH F32 Post-Doctoral Fellow working on sex-dependent neuro-morphological adaptations to changes in the homeostasis of brain extracellular glutamate levels.