Ward Appeltans - Manager Of Ocean Biodiversity Information System

Ward Appeltans

Manager Of Ocean Biodiversity Information System

Ostend, West Flanders, Belgium

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Summary

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Senior

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Top School

Ward Appeltans is a seasoned marine biodiversity information leader with over a decade managing the Ocean Biodiversity Information System and serving as UNESCO/IOC’s marine biodiversity focal point. He combines program and project-management expertise with deep domain knowledge in biological data stewardship developed at VLIZ and through long-term leadership of OBIS. Based in Ostend, Belgium, he blends international coordination skills with hands-on work—he also pursues nature photography, reflecting a practiced eye for marine life and data-driven storytelling. His academic background in environmental biology and environmental management underpins a pragmatic approach to building interoperable biodiversity information services that support science and policy.

10 years of coding experience

9 years of employment as a software developer

Licence, Biologie des organismes et des Populations, Licence, Biologie des organismes et des Populations at Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III

Distinction, Milieuzorg/environment management, Distinction, Milieuzorg/environment management at Erasmushogeschool Brussel

Distinction, Environmental Biology, Distinction, Environmental Biology at Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Github Skills (26)

ocean8

rdf6

metadata6

interoperability6

knowledge-graph5

r-package5

architecture4

api3

biodiversity3

system-information3

ecology3

pixelfed3

taxonomy2

bioinformatics2

Programming languages (5)

RShellHTMLJupyter NotebookPython

Github contributions (5)

iobis/obis-network-datasets

Feb 2022 - Jan 2023

Workflow for processing OBIS tagged datasets in GBIF

Contributions:10 commits, 11 pushes, 4 comments in 10 months

iobis/tracking-data

Feb 2018 - May 2018

Contributions:19 pushes, 1 comment, 1 issue in 2 months

obisworkshoptrackinganimalevent-data

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