Heidi Pak received her doctoral degree in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). She first received her bachelors in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno. There she worked on multiple projects: first she determined the effects of anti-CD40 immunotherapy after bone marrow transplantation in Dr. William Murphy’s lab. Afterwards, she moved on to understanding the structure and function of ryanodine receptors using ryanoids in Dr. William Welch’s Lab and then finally became interested in characterizing the enzymatic properties of IDOLDH in Dr. Claus Tittiger and Dr. Gary Blomquist’s Lab. During her doctoral studies, Dr. Pak joined Dr. Dudley Lamming’s Lab, where she became interested in nutrient signalling pathways mediating the calorie restriction effect. Her work uncovered the role of calories and fasting in a calorie restriction paradigm, which was recently published in Nature Metabolism. She also determined the response to fasting in a chronic fasting model versus a non-fasting model and how this affects mTOR signalling. Dr. Pak will be soon joining Dr. Joseph Takahashi’s group at UT Southwestern as a postdoctoral researcher. Her goal is to discover new mechanistic insights into the regulation of metabolic processes involved in aging.