De Floriani Completes Term as President of the IEEE Computer Society
Leila De Floriani, a professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences with an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, just completed a term leading the IEEE Computer Society--one of the world's foremost professional computing organizations.
De Floriani was elected by her peers in 2018 and served as president-elect in 2019 and president throughout 2020 providing leadership and direction to the organization’s officers and programs that serve more than 100,000 computer scientists and IT professionals from over 168 countries.
"It was a privilege as well as a daunting responsibility and a lot of work to be president during such challenging times, but through the extraordinary support and dedication of the entire CS staff and collaboration of our volunteer leadership, we did not just merely survive last year—we found new creative and innovative ways to thrive and move forward," De Floriani said.
Deans from the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at UMD praised De Floriani for her leadership during a year of extremes.
"While leading as large and diverse an organization as IEEE CS is always challenging, it was even more so in such tumultuous times as we witnessed last year. Leila led a monumental effort across the society in moving over 120 IEEE conferences online during this time," said Amitab Varshney, Dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences.
"Leila also worked tirelessly in increasing diversity and inclusion in the Society, and among other D&I initiatives, she launched a new IEEE CS standing committee on D&I with dedicated funds devoted to it," said BSOS Dean Gregory Ball.
De Floriani is a noted expert in geospatial data science and scientific visualization who has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific publications in data visualization, geospatial data representation and processing, computer graphics, geometric modeling, and shape analysis and understanding. She has received 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 and the National Science Foundation.
In addition to her appointment at UMD, in the past, De Floriani has served as a professor at the University of Genova, Italy and has held a number of positions at academic and research institutions in the U.S. and Europe.
Published on Wed, Oct 3, 2018 - 11:37AM