Francis Heylighen - Biography

Biography

Francis Heylighen was born on September 27, 1960 in Vilvoorde, Belgium. He received his high school education from the "Koninklijk Atheneum Pitzemburg" in Mechelen, in the section Latin-Mathematics. He received his MSc in mathematical physics in 1982, and his PhD in Sciences in 1987, both from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).

In 1983 he started working as a researcher for the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (NFWO). In 1994 he became a tenured researcher at the NFWO and in 2001 a research professor at the VUB. Since 1995 he is affiliated with the VUB’s Center Leo Apostel for interdisciplinary studies. In 2004, he created the ECCO research group which he presently directs. Thanks to a grant from a private sponsor, in 2012 he additionally founded the Global Brain Institute at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, becoming its first director.

In 1989, Valentin Turchin and Cliff Joslyn founded the Principia Cybernetica Project, and Heylighen joined a year later. In 1993, he created the project's encyclopedic site as one of the first complex websites in the world. In 1996, Heylighen founded the "Global Brain Group", an international discussion forum that groups most of the scientists who have worked on the concept of emergent Internet intelligence. Heylighen was also one of the founders and former editor of the Journal of Memetics, which terminated in 2008.

Heylighen is a Felllow of the World Academy of Art and Science, and a member of the Global Agenda Council on Complex Systems of the World Economic Forum. His biography has been listed since 2002 in Marquis Who's Who in the world.