Dr Heyns is the convenor of several Biomedical Forensic Science Programmes at the University of Cape Town. She started her career with a PhD degree in Zoology before teaching dissection-based anatomy at the University of Pretoria medical school for 2 years, followed with 7 years at UWC. During this period and she completed an MBA in the US, graduating cum laude as the top student and she received the Director’s Award for academic achievement and leadership.
She spent 7 years at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland where she was awarded a QUB Teaching Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her exposure to forensics and the reality of crime in South Africa prompted her to return to South Africa, fuelled with the drive 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 has more than 30 years of tertiary academic experience with more than 100 conference presentations and several international, peer-reviewed publications. She is a member of 6 professional learned societies and has or is supervising more than 40 postgraduate students. She serves as an external examiner for other forensic courses in SA and is currently engaged in forensic research in the fields of victimology, trauma, forensic entomology, and marine decomposition. She is also a founding member of the South African Academy of Forensic Sciences (SAAFS), a representative body for the Forensic Science sector in South Africa.