Licia Florio
Senior Trust & Identity Manager - GÉANT
Responsible for leading and developing GÉANT’s strategy and activities for Trust & Identity; to provide advice and guidance primarily to the Executive Team and other team leads as needed; operational management of innovation projects; ability to set up processes, policies and structures for to enable ideas to move to viable products.
Licia is currently leading the T&I services and related activities within the RIA EC-funded project GN4-3; she also manages an activity within the CEF EC-funded project MyAcademicID to enable federated access for the student mobility.
Licia was born in Italy and holds a Computer Science degree from the University of Bologna. In 2001 she moved to the Netherlands – where she had only intended to spend one year – to work for GÉANT (TERENA at the time). Licia was part of the Task Force that produced the eduroam (federated access to wireless networks) pilot - a service that now counts tens of thousands of hotspots in 89 countries across the world. In 2018 Licia was awarded the prestigious Medal of Honour by the Vietsch Foundation that supports research and development of advanced internet technology for scientific research and higher education.
Working in the area of Trust and Identity she has led or guided most of the initiatives that make up the current European and global authentication and authorisation infrastructure for research and education. Having supported the Task Forces that produced the eduroam (federated access to wireless networks) pilot and led to the technical infrastructure for eduGAIN federated authentication system, she initiated the EuroCAMP workshops.
She led the TERENA Certificate Service that has greatly reduced the price of digital certificates for research and education organisations across Europe, and the TACAR project that facilitates trust between certificates issued for research and education purposes across the globe. Such activities require coordination beyond Europe and she has provided continuing leadership throughout the life of the REFEDS activity developing compatible federation policies and practices. Currently she leads the AARC project that continues to help research organisations to deploy federated access.