We mourn our very esteemed colleague and friend Holger Heppe. His death is a great loss for us. Our thoughts are with his wife and family and friends.
Holger studied sports science and biology as a teacher. Since 2012 he worked as a student and academic assistant and from 2014 as a doctoral student in the field of performance and training in sports at the Institute for Sports Science.
Holger’s main area of interest fell in the connection between motor skills and cognition, whereby, during his sports studies he wrote his master thesis with the title "Acute effects of a physical turning intervention on mental rotation performance - an experimental pre-post study". In 2014 he was awarded the Graduate Award (natural science) at the Institute for Sports Science and it became apparent that he would further investigate this topic scientifically.
As part of his doctoral studies, he worked on various projects on the effects of physical training interventions on cognitive performance. He has successfully published three international publications within this field in a renowned peer-reviewed journal (Frontiers in Psychology) and was close to complete his dissertation.
In his first publication entitled "The Relationship between Expertise in Sports, Visuospatial, and Basic Cognitive Skills", he investigated the visual-spatial abilities of top athletes compared to recreational counterparts in a series of four experiments. The research question was whether top athletes in team sports are superior to recreational athletes in basic cognitive skills. The results of his study lead to the conclusion that cognitive skills that are trained in team sports can also affect basic cognitive abilities.
The second publication, entitled "Team Handball Experts Outperform Recreational Athletes in Hand and Foot Response Inhibition: A Behavioral Study", deals with the motor inhibition performance of top handball players compared to recreational athletes. Holger demonstrated that the experts were superior in terms of motor inhibition, i.e. the suppression of a motor action, and that this is related to the level of expertise (especially hand-eye coordination) in top-class sport.
In his third publication (as co-author) "Off-Court Generic Perceptual-Cognitive Training in Elite Volleyball Athletes: Task-Specific Effects and Levels of Transfer", the research was designed to address the question as to whether non-specific cognitive perception training leads to an improvement in performance in the field, i.e. whether top athletes can benefit from such training? The results show positive effects in close-up transfer but not in sports game-specific transfer.
Holger presented his research results as a speaker at national and international congresses and his research was of a quality that made him a prize winner. At a major European conference in July 2019, he was listed as a finalist in the Young Researcher Awards.
Holger has achieved all of these results, although he was already severely affected by his illness. He did not let himself be restricted by this and it was impressive and inspiring with how much energy and enthusiasm he pushed his scientific career.
We found as colleagues, Holger's helpfulness and unshakable, scientific ethos to be outstanding. He had clear values and principles that made him a great role model. As a member of the WWU Ethics Committee and a strong supporter of the open science movement, he always made it clear what science stands for - careful, responsible and transparent research. Holger was always interested in the research projects of his colleagues, even during the rehabilitation process and latter stages of his illness His advice and assessment were valued and thankfully accepted. Holger never wanted to be spared and always jumped in whenever he could. Despite of his illness, he had always looked ahead and came into the work area happily and confidently. We all shared anecdotes of daily life and always talked about the caveats of life, often forgetting his physically ill constitution
Football was his passion. Whether on the court or as a coach on the sidelines, when it came to football, Holger was in his element. In teaching, he struck a balancing act between practice and theory and captivated even die-hard practitioners when he spoke of the processes behind pure play.
We will miss his irrepressible interest in science, but above all his life-affirming and amiable manner. We are very sorry that he will no longer experience so many things and that we could only watch without power. We lose a good friend, a dear colleague and a very interesting scientist.
