Joana Beja is a senior scientific data officer at the Flanders Marine Institute Data Centre. Her main activities are developed around EMODnet, as EMODnet Biology coordinator and part of the EMODnet Central Portal Technical team. Joana’s expertise is in physical oceanography data management, an activity developed during more than 20 years and that included the coordination of national projects as well as providing data management for several international projects. Since 2019, this expertise has expanded to the Marine Biology domain.  

In the VLIZ team, Joana is also involved in EMODnet Ingestion, EMODnet Physics and EMODnet Seabed Habitats, ensuring a liaison between these projects and the VLIZ team. 

Joana has extensive field work experience and has joined several research cruises in the North Atlantic, Arctic and Southern Ocean, collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams in data collection and data analysis. Joana is involved in other international initiatives, like the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS), as part of the Data Management Sub-Committee and co-chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion group and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), as a member of the Vocabulary Infrastructure Project Team and co-manager of the European OBIS node, EurOBIS. 

Mathieu Belbéoch is the manager of OceanOPS, the joint WMO/IOC-UNESCO Support Centre for oceanography and marine meteorology observing programmes, OceanOPS.  
He has 20 years of experience at the international level in the ocean observation systems implementation and governance. 
With a mathematical engineer background, applied to numerical modelling in oceanography, and after a short experience in web development projects leading, he has supported the development of the Argo programme as Technical Coordinator, and made of OceanOPS a firm operational centre to support main in-situ ocean observing systems. He has been the architect of an ambitious web-based information system to monitor the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) in real-time and deliver tools and services essential to its implementers and governing bodies. He has pioneered the cooperation with mariners (sailing ships and NGOs e.g.) to help sustain the global arrays and raise the awareness of a larger public to ocean observations. 
OceanOPS is now fully part of the WMO Infrastructure department and Earth System Monitoring division, to monitor and report on the status of the GOOS, support efficient operations, and support free and unrestricted data and metadata delivery.

Alice Belin has been working at the European Commission, in the Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV), since 2020. She is a member of the team in DG ENV working on the protection of the marine environment in Europe and more particularly the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. In the team, she focuses particularly on issues related to marine biodiversity and the health of marine species, habitats and ecosystems. Together with other team members, she also follows issues related to ocean observations, monitoring and data flows. She is also part of the core team working on the review of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Before integrating the European Commission, Alice Belin had already been working on the protection of the marine environment for over 10 years in various consultancy and advocacy organisations.