Heivet obtained a Bachelor of Biology at the University of Habana. During her honours project, she explored how Auditory Steady State Responses (ASSR) could be objectively measured in free sound field conditions in both typical hearing individuals and cochlear implant users. After gaining her Master’s in Systems Physiology at the same university, she worked as a research associate at the Speech and Hearing Department at the Neuroscience Cuban Centre (CNEURO) where she led projects related to the use and improvement of objective measures to assess hearing function in newborns and paediatric cochlear implant candidates.

Her research at Macquarie University currently focuses on understanding how cortical and subcortical structures and efferent pathways, referred to as ‘listening loops’ contribute to hearing and speech perception. This research began during her PhD candidature, where Heivet examined how these ‘listening loops’ were differently recruited depending on the speech signal being heard. Subsequently she has continued to build up this research in her postdoctoral work, focusing on how the listening brain adapts and learns statistics contained in auditory signals. She approaches this by bringing a systems neuroscience framework – often applied to animal research – to human research in the auditory brain.