Professor Sue van den Heever received her B.S. in Mathematics and her M.S. in Physical Geography from the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg, South Africa. She worked as a research associate at WITS focusing on topics such as ENSO, southern African drought and tropical-temperature troughs before coming to Colorado State University to obtain her Ph.D. Sue then spent two years as a postdoctoral student and several years as a research scientist at Colorado State University before joining the faculty in the fall of 2008.