Carla graduated as a veterinary practitioner from the University of Porto, Portugal in 2002. She worked for several years in small animal practice while studying for her MSc in Veterinary Public Health in Lisbon Technical University, focusing on Johne’s disease in dairy cattle. She lectured in epidemiology and public health for some years in the University of Porto and completed a PhD in Salmonella in pigs, specialising on risk characterisation and modelling of disease transmission within a herd.

In 2012 Carla moved to Scotland and worked for the Epidemiology Research Unit (ERU) SRUC – Scotland’s Rural College for seven years. There she was involved in several projects related to the British pig sector and other livestock species, with the aim to provide relevant epidemiological science that meets the needs of policy-makers and industry. Several of the projects with the Scottish and English pig industries involved the application of quantitative methods to allow data from different sources (e.g. abattoir data) to be integrated and applied effectively.

During her time in SRUC she was the ERU species-expert on pigs and contributed to the existing Scottish Centre of Expertise for Animal Disease Outbreaks, with the particular responsibility to work with other scientists in providing the evidence base to establish the best control strategies to match the pig industry’s needs.  Carla join Animal Health Ireland as Pig HealthCheck programme manager in September 2019 and became a Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Public Health in 2020.