Dr Anton Van de Putte is a marine biologist and open science advocate who obtained a PhD from the KULeuven working on the ecology and evolution of Antarctic fish.
During his PhD he developed a strong interest in the Antarctic treaty system and its spirit of cooperation. In particular the idea that scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available.
In 2012 he became the coordinator of the SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal (formerly SCAR-MarBIN) at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. As the regional node manager of the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) and the Global Biodiversity information Facility (GBIF) he is passionate about making Antarctic and Southern Ocean Biodiversity data publicly available. He is part of the SCAR Standing Committee on Antarctic Data Management and the SOOS Data Management Sub Committee.
Since 2016 he is the Belgian scientific representative to Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) where he is particularly interned in ecosystem based management, the development of Marine Protected areas and the possible effect of climate change.
Since 2020 he is also affiliated with the Marine Biology lab at the University Libre de Bruxelles. In this position he is keen on applying open science to better understand the distribution of Antarctic and Southern Ocean organisms and develop open science tools that translate open data into data products that can support policy decision making.