Carla Maria Modena received her degree in Mathematics from the University of Trento in 1985. In 1986, she worked as research assistant (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in Ökonometrie at the Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Universität Regensburg, Germany. In 1987 she joined the Artificial Intelligence section of ITC-irst (Trento - Italy). She is currently a researcher in FBK (Trento - Italy) where she works with the Technologies of Vision (TeV) research unit.

She retired in August 2024.