Mark Allen is the Director of the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Centre (Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg, CDS). He obtained his PhD from the Australian National University in 1998. After a postdoctoral position at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore USA, he joined the Observatoire de Strasbourg and became a research scientist in the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 2004. His scientific interests are the use of e-Infrastructures for advancing astronomy, and also the astrophysical processes associated with black holes at the centres of galaxies – Active Galactic Nuclei. He served as the Chair of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA, 2017-19), and currently leads a work package in the European funded ESCAPE project in the context of EOSC. He is a member of the FAIRsFAIR project European Group of FAIR Champions, and the EOSC Task Force on Researcher Engagement and Adoption.