Céline Frank works as policy officer at the European Commission, DG MARE, in the team in charge of Maritime Spatial Planning and the Blue Economy Sectors. 

She has a scientific background in Marine Biology and in Ecology. Her research focus has ranged from the deep sea ecosystems to the mangrove forests. She joined DG MARE in 2016 and has been involved in the development of the aquaculture sector, fisheries data collection and management, and the co-management of the European Maritime, Aquaculture and Fisheries Fund. She now oversees the European Maritime Spatial Planning Directive and the offshore renewable energy policy developments since 2020. 

When not in her working habitat, you can observe her diving in the Mediterranean Sea or climbing some big rocks around Europe. 

Mr. Bogdan GHINEA is Head of unit within the Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration of Romania and was directly involved in the transposition of the 2014/89/EU Directive establishing a framework for maritime spatial planning. At the same time, he was involved in the process of the elaboration and approving of the Maritime Spatial Plan of Romania and he was the Romanian coordinator within the two MARSPLAN-BS projects implemented in collaboration with the competent authorities of the Republic of Bulgaria, projects that contributed both to the development of cooperation between the two states in the process of maritime spatial planning and to the development of the first draft of the Maritime spatial plan for Romania. 

Another major area under the coordination of Mr. Bogdan GHINEA is the area of housing policies as part of the wider development policies for territorial planning. 

Patrick Gorringe is Manager of International Ocean Relations at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI).

Patrick has devoted a lot of his work in bringing together diverse ocean observing communities and building partnerships in order to enhance the cooperation and by this increase the accessibility of oceanographic data. This includes emerging low-cost ocean observing technologies and initiatives together with citizen science communities to democratize access to the ocean and ocean data.

Patrick is involved in marine data and ocean observing projects, programs and initiatives on local, regional and global level. He is involved in many parts of EMODnet, EMODnet Data Ingestion, coordinating EMODnet Physics and more.