Meet Our New Team Member: Heleen Nauwelaers
We’re thrilled to welcome Heleen Nauwelaers to the Idevax team as our Human Health Engineer. With a Master’s in Bioengineering and an Advanced Master in Innovative Health Technology from KU Leuven, she brings strong expertise in human health innovation.
She also plays professional basketball — currently with Kangoeroes Mechelen — after years competing abroad in France, Spain, and a summer in Mexico. Additionally, she was part of the Belgian Cats for eight years, won 2 European bronze medals with them and participated in the Olympics in Tokyo. Currently, she is part of a project of the federation to start up 3×3 Belgian Cats team.
We’re excited to have her on board and look forward to the energy and insight she brings to the team!
1. Can you share more about your education/career trajectory 🎙️?
During my first three years, studying for my bachelor’s degree, I was a full-time student at KU Leuven in combination with basketball as non-professional. For my master’s degree I needed to choose a Major and minor. I chose major Human health engineering and minor nutrition and health. I did those two master years spread over four years, because I started to play professional at that time in France and Spain. I graduated in June 2021. After a year of only basketball, I came back to Belgium and started studying again in September 2022, an advanced master of Innovative health technology at Groep T of the KU Leuven. I graduated at Groep T in January 2024.
2. What interests you most about science 🎙️?
I’m very fascinated about the human body. How so many processes interact and can do so much. How so many things are the same, but still everybody is unique and all bodies work a little bit different. This in combination with what scientists learned of the years and introduced to help and heal people by altering or supporting processes. I think that’s fascinating, but at the same time also a mystery, because there is still so much we don’t understand.
3. Why did you decide to pick MedTech 🎙️?
After high school I didn’t really know for sure what I wanted to do, but I liked math and was very interested in biology and more specific the human body. This way I started the study of bio-engineering with the idea of choosing human health engineering in my master’s. Over the years, the more I learned about the Medtech industry, the more my interest was growing.