Born in 1965, Jean-Marc has been interested in the question of UFOs since teenage. He has Masters degrees in Geology, Environmental Sciences and school teaching qualification for Geography. He is currently teacher of Geography, Earth Sciences and Environment in secondary and higher schools. He has long been an activist and manager of two Belgian NGOs for awareness, training and education on environmental issues.

Jean-Marc has basically a profile of field investigator. His first investigations were carried out in the early 1990s within the Sobeps during the Belgian Wave. Thanks his education, the surveys are precise and detailed.

In 2008, he joined Patrick Ferryn, Léon Brenig, Auguste Meessen and some other former members of SOBEPS and participates to the COBEPS. He joins the group that updates the investigations methods and is then in charge of the coordination of the network of investigators.

Open to all aspects of the phenomenon, trained in cognitive interviewing, Jean-Marc has worked to make the investigation and their management more efficient from all points of view. He is particularly interested in angle determinations and their evaluation by eyewitnesses. He also seeks to take advantage of the new resources provided by the Internet for the identification of sightings. In the framework of the COBEPS special study: the complete re-examination of the first day of the Belgian wave (29/11/1989), he is interested in the evaluation of distances using a fuzzy logic model, the automatic classification between IFO and UFO by Machine Learning and the spatial analysis of observations.

Aware of the biases induced by the investigators themselves, of the importance of relationship with witnesses or with other researchers, methodology oriented, Jean-Marc has a socio-constructivist vision of Science. His concrete approach is action research. The researcher/investigator acts in the field of ufology looking collaborations, interdisciplinarity and trying to maintain a great rigor brought by empirical natural sciences.

Several of his investigations and publications are available on the cobeps.org website or in the Academia and ResearchGate profiles.

E-mail: jm.wattecamps@cobeps.org