In 2012 Barend was appointed full Professor in biosemantics in the Department of Human Genetics at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in The Netherlands.

From 2018 to 2023 Barend was the elected president of CODATA, the affiliated organisation on research data related issues of the International Science Council.

At his retirement in 2024 he was Knighted by the Dutch King in the ‘Order of the Netherlands Lion’, the oldest and highest reward for cultural and scientific contributions to the international society.

Barend is a frequent keynote speaker about FAIR and open science around the world, and continues to participate in various national and international boards.

[1] Barend was one of the designers and coordinators of the transformational Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) project known as Open PHACTS,[9][10] pioneering the use of semantic technologies, nanopublications and micro-attributions in pharmaceutical biomedical research.