Professor Leila De Floriani
Woman in Science: The Groundbreaking Path of Professor Leila De Floriani
From the port city of Genoa, Italy, De Floriani has carved out a distinguished career that defied convention and propelled her to the forefront of academic exploration.
Born in the post-World War II baby boom, Professor Leila De Floriani, who holds a joint appointment between the Department of Geographical Sciences and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), recalls a childhood imbued with Italy’s spirit of progress and economic vitality.
“I saw my family quickly improving their economic status,” she said. From an early age, De Floriani's parents prioritized her education. They especially insisted on her learning foreign languages to be open to the world, and thus she started taking English language classes as a child. She also had the largest globe of the world among her friends.
Since she was little, De Floriani wanted to be a math teacher because of her passion for math. Being a teacher was considered the most appropriate career for a woman back then. At home, though, women in her family were ahead of their time. “I grew up with a working mother, which was rare,” De Floriani said. “Even my grandmother worked.”
Meanwhile, De Floriani’s father worked in the export and import business and was an avid traveler. He filled their house with maps and other geography-related things, such as a game of bingo with world capitals, which she knew by heart. “The combination of math and geography was always a part of my life,” she recalled.
The Budding Academic
De Floriani's educational journey took a turn when she attended a high school focused on humanities [Liceo Classico]. There, she developed a deep appreciation for interdisciplinary learning.
“My philosophy in math is you study it to understand the world,” De Floriani stated. “At school, I learned classical Greek, which helped a lot in math.” This humanistic foundation proved invaluable as she went on to college.
At that time, college was bustling with the enthusiasm of Italy’s baby boom generation. At the University of Genoa, De Floriani joined a large cohort of women studying mathematics.
“About 70 to 80 percent of math students were women, who were mostly interested in a career as a teacher,” De Floriani said.
As De Floriani progressed in her studies, her interest in applied mathematics prevailed, and her environment started to change. She increasingly found herself in places where women were in the minority, a trend that would only become more pronounced.
“Back then, I didn’t feel the effects of discrimination against women. I was always around women who had been working. I went to a university full of women,” she said.
Unbeknownst to societal expectations, De Floriani forged ahead, eventually becoming the first in her family to earn a college degree.
Right Place at the Right Time
In 1983, De Floriani embarked on graduate studies with a focus on discrete mathematics, followed by a postgraduate fellowship from Italy's National Research Council (CNR). This fellowship centered on the study of sea wave and surge simulation, with emphasis on implications for the coastal regions of Venice.
“The collaboration with Italy’s Marine Institute, an institution similar to NOAA, got me interested in GIS [Geographic Information System]. I started to look at modeling the sea bottom based on the way they were acquiring data, and on the digitalization of existing maps,” she said.
Around that time, De Floriani joined CNR’s Institute for Applied Math as a member of their research staff working on terrain modeling and visibility computation. Remarkably, most of the staff in that project were women.
During her six-year tenure with CNR, De Floriani refined her research, traveled abroad and participated in conferences. It was during a NATO workshop that she discovered an emerging area of computational geometry, igniting her interest in modeling reality through spatial data analysis.
A Woman in a Man’s World
In 1990, De Floriani was hired directly as a tenured professor of computer science at the University of Genoa, bypassing the typical route through the assistant and associate professor positions. “This was quite uncommon then and now,” she said.
Immediately, her professional landscape underwent a marked shift: There were far fewer women faculty members, and she was the only full professor who was a woman.
“In many situations, I was the only woman in committees and often younger than others,” De Floriani observed. She had a lot to build during her tenure: a computer graphics and computer vision curriculum, as well as the first joint GIS project at the national level, which helped building the GIS academic community in Italy.
Some colleagues showed “too much chivalry,” which made her feel uncomfortable. Others would treat her as if she were one of the boys, which made her equally uncomfortable and even annoyed. “When men used inappropriate language, I would say good-bye and leave the room,” the professor said. These were just a few of the many manifestations of sexism she experienced.
She also encountered situations where she was expected to take on stereotypically feminine roles. One example was being assigned as the note-taker during search committee meetings. “As the only woman in a meeting among peers, you are expected to take notes,” she explained.
In addition to her shy nature, De Floriani grappled with internalized sexism and had to work hard on herself to get used to speaking up. “It was a long learning experience,” she said.
At GEOG and Beyond
On her first sabbatical in 1998, De Floriani came to UMD for a joint project between UMIACS and GEOG. During that time, she got engaged to her future husband, Distinguished University Professor Hanan Samet from the Department of Computer Science. In 2016, she arrived at UMD for good, just in time to participate in the creation of the new Center for GIS.
“The Department of Geographical Sciences] gave me excellent opportunities to apply my technical skills to geography,” she remarked. “Since then, I learned a lot from fields that weren’t mine: remote sensing, forest modeling, sea ice surface analysis, and so on.”
In 2021, De Floriani became the director of Graduate Studies at the Department and has since enjoyed working with students more closely. She was already committed to mentoring, collaboration and service. “It is my time to give back,” she said.
De Floriani’s personal website lists numerous acts of service that have had an impact in academia and in her professional domain. She was the 2020 President of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers [IEEE] Computer Society. Having overcome many obstacles faced by the women of her generation, she is a champion for diversity in science. Notably, De Floriani established the IEEE CS Diversity & Inclusion Committee and a dedicated fund, paving the way for underrepresented voices in science.
From challenging gender norms to spearheading initiatives aimed at fostering equity, her tireless efforts have reverberated far beyond the confines of her disciplines. Amidst her myriad achievements, De Floriani rejoices in helping aspiring scientists and even more so in her students. “I am more proud of my students than any research,” she said.
Main image: Leila De Floriani with her husband at the Gobi Desert in front of the Old Wall in 2017, China. All photos courtesy of De Floriani
