Peter M Haugan is professor of oceanography at the Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, Norway. He presently serves as vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC/UNESCO) as well as the European Marine Board. He leads the Norwegian Atlantic Current Observatory (NACO; a national Norwegian facility for ocean gliders) and is involved in three EU funded marine and polar research infrastructure projects: Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS; an ESFRI Preparatory Phase project), Gliders for Research, Ocean Observation and Management (GROOM; a design study) and Fixed-Point Open Ocean Observatories (FixO3; coordination activities, support actions and joint research activities).

Haugan has a master degree in applied mathematics and a PhD in oceanography both from the University of Bergen. He started his career in industry as a research scientist in petroleum reservoir simulation but later changed to oceanography. He spent two years at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) in the 1990s before acquiring his present position in 1999. He was a PI in the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research that received national centre-of-excellence status in 2002. He served as director of the Geophysical Institute 2003-2011. Haugan has a long track record of active marine and polar science, including coordination and development of infrastructure. He has also led the institutes engagement in marine renewable energy, in particular offshore wind. He seeks to develop synergies between distributed observation systems and fixed point observatories.