Mrs Charlina Vitcheva was appointed Director General of DG MARE, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries in June 2020.

Prior to this, she became Deputy Director General of the Joint Research Center (JRC) in September 2016. She was acting DG for the JRC from the 1st November 2019 to the 30th April 2020.

Previously, Mrs Vitcheva have been Director of Smart & Sustainable Growth in Southern Europe at DG Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO), and also held a Director’s position on Inclusive Growth, Territorial and Urban Development and Northern Europe.

Before joining the European Commission, Charlina Vitcheva has been active in the Bulgarian public administration for 15 years, including at the Permanent Representation in Brussels, being actively involved in the negotiations of Bulgaria accession to the European Union, notably in charge of agricultural and fisheries dossiers and heading the negotiations, from 2000 to 2004, in the area of agriculture and rural development, food safety and fisheries.

Marie-Francoise Voidrot is a Director with the OGC Innovation Program, with a focus on initiatives related to Earth Observations.  She is involved in several initiatives of importance to GEO, the Group on Earth Observations, including the European projects ILIAD, E-SHAPE, and NextGEOSS. She is OGC representative to the GEO Program Board and Co-Chair of the GEOSS Infrastructure Development Task Team (GIDTT) and of the GEO Data Sharing and Data Management Working Group.  She contributed over the last few years to the  GEO Expert Advisory Group, GEOSS EVOLVE, and the OGC’s Disasters Concept Development Study.  

Prior to joining OGC, Mrs. Voidrot was Senior Project Manager at Meteo-France for numerous meteorological operational information systems for use by Meteo-France and by major customers in spatial, defense and aeronautical activities. She possesses a global end-to-end view of information systems, from production to a large variety of community application activities. From 2009-2016, she served as Meteo-France representative to the OGC and as co-chair of the OGC Met Ocean Domain Working Group, working to align representatives from across the Met Ocean community with OGC standards experts regarding a range of interoperability requirements.  

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is a not-for-profit international consensus organization comprised of over 550 industry, government, academic, research, and not-for-profit organizations. OGC standards and best practices enable seamless discovery, sharing, integration, and application information in a location context across networks, systems, enterprises, organizations, and jurisdictions. 

Member of the World register of marine species (WoRMS) steering council, the Catalogue of Life (CoL) board of directors, EuroGOOS working group on sealevel data, the GLOSS steering group, the Flemish Open Science Board.

Currently involved  in these projects : EDITO infra, DT Bioflow, DT Geo, Geo Inquire.

VLIZ co-developed and manages several of international e-infrastructures and services: the central portal and the biology portal for the European Marine Observation and Data network (EMODnet), LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone and data systems, World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), Global Sea Level Observing System (GLOSS), Ocean Biogeographic Information System (EurOBIS), Marine Data Archive, Integrated Marine Information System, Marine Regions. VLIZ is a NODC in the network the IODE program of IOC-UNESCO and a regular member of the ICSU World Data System.