Degree with honors in Physics, PhD in Geodesy and Cartography. Maria is Full Professor of GIS and Digital Mapping at the Politecnico di Milano (PoliMI) and member of the School of Doctoral Studies in Data Science at “Roma La Sapienza”. In 1997 she started the Laboratory of Geomatics  (now GEOLab) and up to 2011 she coordinated its activities as Head of the Lab. From 2011 to 2016 she was Vice Rector of Politecnico di Milano for the Como Campus. 
She is the chair of ISPRS WG IV/4 (Collaborative crowdsourced cloud mapping); member of ESA ACEO and of GeoForAll Advisory Board; chair of the OSGeo UN Committee and of the WG “Capacity Building” of the UN Open GIS Initiative, Deputy-Chair of the UN-GGIM Academic Network and mentor of PoliMappers, the Politecnico di Milano chapter of YouthMappers.
She has been developing her scientific activity within geodesy and geomatics since 1988, by participating and leading many national and international research projects. Initially devoted to research in physical geodesy, radar-altimetry and statistical analysis, after becoming an associate professor, she focused her interests on digital mapping and geographic information systems, free and open source GIS theory and applications representing one of her main research issues. She is co-author of three textbooks on the statistical data treatment, of a volume on orthophotos and digital terrain models, as well as more than 88 indexed scientific publications.
In July 2015, she hosted over 400 attendees to her home campus in Como, for FOSS4G-Europe 2015. She has been member of the Scientific Committees of many FOSS4G and Chair of the Academic Track of FOSS4G 2018 (Dar Es Salaam).
In September 2015 she was honored with the 2015 Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software during the FOSS4G 2015 conference in Seoul, South Korea.