Dr. Karin Hammer is a research scientist at the University Hospital Regensburg. She is interested in cardiac excitation contraction coupling and intercellular communication during health and disease. Dr. Hammer received her PhD in 2009 at Saarland University in Homburg/Saar, Germany in Peter Lipp's lab where she studied the structure and function of isolated cardiac myocytes. Dr. Hammer then spent 4 years at UCDavis in Davis, CA, USA in Don Bers' lab for her postdoctoral training where she established whole heart confocal Ca imaging to better unterstand the intercellular communication between adjacent cardiac myocytes in intact tissue. She continued this line of work at the Medical University of Graz, Austria in Burkert Pieske's lab. Since 2015 she is a memer of the research team in the Cardiology department at the University Hospital in Regensburg, Germany, lead by Lars Maier. She studies the sodium and calcium handling in different disease models with a special interest in ARVC.