Francis Paul Heylighen (born 1960) is a Belgian cyberneticist investigating the emergence and evolution of intelligent organization. He presently works as a research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking Free University of Brussels, where he directs the transdisciplinary research group on "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition"[1][2] and the Global Brain Institute. He is best known for his work on the Principia Cybernetica Project, his model of the Internet as a Global brain, and his contributions to the theories of memetics and self-organization.