Barend is global expert on FAIR and director of the Dutch International Support and Coordination Office. Originally molecular biologist with 15 years of basic research experience on malaria parasites and vaccines, he refocused in 2000 on semantic technologies and Open Science. He has been in this field from the beginning and started various early movements for open science ‘avant la lettre’. Mons published over 100 peer reviewed articles and more recently a handbook named: Data Stewardship for Open Science. He was senior author on the now widely cited FAIR principles paper in Nature’s Scientific Data in 2016. In 2015, Barend was appointed Chair of the High Level Expert Group (HLEG) for the European Open Science Cloud. The group published its report, which marked a critical step towards realising the aspiration of the EOSC. After leaving the HLEG he continued to be active towards the practical realisation of EOSC, defined in the report as the Internet of FAIR data and services. Three countries (NL-DE-FR) took the initiative to create a Global, Open approach to the implementation of FAIR principles in practice, called GO FAIR, with the aim to kick-start the developments towards EOSC in a global, open science and innovation context.