De Floriani, Leila

Bio

​​​​​​​Leila De Floriani is a full professor at the University of Maryland with a joint appointment with the Department of Geographical Sciences and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies  (UMIACS).  She is affiliated with the Department of Computer Science, the Center for Geospatial Information Science, and the UMIACS Center for Automation Research.  Since the Fall of 2021, she has been the Director of Graduate Studies in Geographical Sciences. 

De Floriani has previously been a professor of Computer Science at the University of Genova (Italy), where she developed the first undergraduate and graduate curricula in computer graphics in Italy, and served as Director of the Ph.D. program in Computer  Science for eight years. She has also held positions at the University of Nebraska, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Italian National Research Council.

She is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), a Fellow of the Eurographics Association, a Pioneer of the Solid Modeling Association, and an inducted member of the IEEE Visualization Academy. She is a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Golden Core award and an inducted member of the IEEE Honor Society IEEE Eta Kappa Nu.

De Floriani was the 2020 President of the IEEE Computer Society. She is the IEEE Division VIII Director for 2023-24 and a member of the IEEE Board of Directors and the IEEE Assembly. She is the founding Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Among the other involvements, she has been a member of the IEEE Conferences Committee (2021-23), and of the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board (2023). She also joined the Computing Research Association (CRA) Board in 2020-23. She is a member of the Scientific Council of the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF).

De Floriani has been the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) from 2015 to 2018 and served as an associate editor for IEEE TVCG from 2004 to 2008. De Floriani is currently an editor of the ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems, Computers & Graphics, Computer Science Review, GeoInformatica, Graphical Models, and the International Journal of Spatial Information Science. She has served on the program committees of over 150 leading international conferences, contributing to several of them in a leadership capacity.

She has authored over 300 peer-reviewed scientific publications in data visualization, spatial data science, computer graphics, geometric modeling, shape analysis and understanding, garnering several best paper awards and invitations as a keynote speaker. Her research has been funded by numerous national and international agencies, including the European Commission, the National Science Foundation, and NASA.