Susan van den Heever

Susan Claire van den Heever is a South African atmospheric scientist who is a professor at Colorado State University. Her research considers cloud physics and mesoscale modelling. She is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and an editor of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.

Early life and education Originally from South Africa, van den Heever earned her bachelor's degree at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she studied mathematics and physical geography. She remained at the University for a further year, where she completed a higher diploma in education. She then worked as a mathematics teacher at a high school in Johannesburg. She eventually returned to university, where she worked toward a graduate degree in geography. Her master's research involved modelling of tropical-temperate troughs in South Africa. Specifically, she studied El Niño–Southern Oscillation and drought in southern Africa. Subsequently, van den Heever moved to the United States as a doctoral researcher. She completed her PhD at Colorado State University, where she investigated supercell storms. After earning her doctorate, van den Heever worked as a postdoctoral scholar and then research scientist at Colorado State University. She was named Monfort Professor in 2015 and University Distinguished Professor in 2022. Since 2020 she has also been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford.

The research that van den Heever conducts primarily focuses on storm systems and the impacts of air pollution on cloud formation. In 2021, van den Heever was named principal investigator of the NASA Investigation of Cloud Updrafts (INCUS) mission, which is expected to launch in 2027.

Awards and honours 2002 NASA Group Achievement Award to CRYSTAL-FACE Science Team 2013 Colorado State University Outstanding Professor of the Year Award 2015 Colorado State University Outstanding Professor of the Year Award 2018 Edward N. Lorenz Teaching Excellence Award 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Houghton Lectureship 2021 Fellow of the American Meteorological Society

Selected publications