Dawie van den Heever

Activist, Atheist, Buddhist, Educator/Teacher, Engineer, Foodie, Inventor, Scientist

Dawie went to high school in the heart of Johannesburg before moving down to Stellenbosch to study Mechatronic Engineering which he finished in 2005. He then went on to do his MScEng and PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Stellenbosch University graduating in 2007 and 2011 respectively. Since then Dawie has been working as a senior lecturer at the Department of Mechanical & Mechatronic Engineering at Stellenbosch University and doing research in Biomedical Engineering as part of the Biomedical Engineering Research Group. Dabbling in many different fields initially, including biomechanics, respiratory dynamics, medical device development, sports medicine and many more, Dawie decided to focus his research efforts in his long-time favourite subject area and late night go to topic of neuroscience and human behaviour. Dawie co-founded two groups at Stellenbosch University in 2017, the Neural Engineering Research Venture (NERV) the vehicle for cutting edge research, and Neuroscience Education and Research Discussions (NERD), a platform where like-minded people get together to discuss brain related topics. Dawie’s current research efforts involve making use of EEG recordings and novel experimental setups to answer fundamental questions about our understanding of the brain: Do we have free will? Is my experience of red the same as your experience of red, the mystery of qualia. And the ultimate question of what is consciousness? Since 2014 Dawie has been the managing director of HEEVER Technologies, a medical devices company. Since 2015 he has been the IEEE student branch counselor at Stellenbosch University and since 2016 he is the chair of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society South Africa Section. Dawie has two international PCT patents (a third one in the process), more than 25 publications in international peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings. Dawie is the lead African contact in the Young Southern African Entrepreneurs (YSAE) program supported by the German agency DAAD. He is responsible for the South African leg of the Global Engineering Teams (GET) program that educates engineering students in global teams through project based learning methodologies. He has also attended the International Design Thinking Week at the Hasso Plattner Institute at Potsdam where he was introduced and fell in love with the Design Thinking mind-set to problem solving. Dawie’s goal in life is simple, he wants to change the world.

Education, neuroscience, consciousness and changing the world.

The power of education

Biomedical Engineering, Brain, Consciousness, Engineering, Neuroscience, Technology

I want to help change the world through the power of ideas.

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