Jean-Claude Burgelman is emeritus professor social sciences at the Free University of Brussels. He retired in 2020 from the European Commission Brussels where he was in charge from 2014 onwards, of Open Science at the Diretorate General for Research and Innovation. His team developed the EC’s polices on open science, the European Open Science Cloud, open data and open access. He joined the European Commission in 1999 as a Visiting Scientist in the Joint Research Centre where he was in charge of socio-economic research on digital technologies. In January 2008, he moved to the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (attached to the president of the EC) and one year later joined DG RTD, where he created top level advisory boards like the European Research and Innovation Area Board, the Innovation for Growth Group and the European Forum for Forward Looking Activities.  All these groups contributed to the design of the EC’s huge Framework programs for research and innovation.

Till 2000 he was full professor of communication technology policy at the Free University of Brussels, as well as the founding director its research Centre for Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication. He has been visiting professor at the University of Antwerp, the European College of Brughes and the University of South Africa and sits on several academic journals. He chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Innovation and was a member of its Science Advisory Committee.

He recently joined the advisory board of Open Knowledge Maps, Scimagine and became the editor in chief of Frontiers Policy Lab.

In  2022 he became the director of the Frontiers Planet Prize, a global competition to ignite science that can save the planet.