Dr Marise Heyns
Vice-Chair
Marise is a Forensic Entomologist with a PhD degree in Zoology and an MBA, graduating cum laude as the top student at University of Stellenbosch Business School. She is an academic with more than 30 years of tertiary academic experience and is currently the convenor of the Biomedical Forensic Science Programmes at UCT. She is an active researcher with more than 100 conference presentations and several international, peer reviewed publications.
Her passion for forensics and the reality of crime in South Africa prompted her to contribute to the fight against crime and specifically the training of forensically qualified postgraduate students to generate research and knowledge in the field of forensics, applicable to the South African situation.
She established CapeFORTE, the Cape Forensic Taphonomy & Entomology Laboratory, with Dr Devin Finaughty in 2016, which offers specialised forensic entomological and taphonomic analysis services, providing valuable information on PMI and the circumstances surrounding death in cases where individuals are in a state of decomposition or the remains skeletonised. She is also a member of 9 professional learned societies and have or is supervising more than 40 post graduate students.
She regularly serves as external examiner for other forensic courses in SA and is currently engaged in forensic research in the fields of forensic entomology, medico-legal death investigation, trauma and marine decomposition.