Staffilani grew up on a farm in Martinsicuro in central Italy, speaking only the local dialect, and with no books until her older brother brought some back from his school.
Staffilani dibesarkan di sebuah pertanian di Martinsicuro, Italia tengah, berbicara hanya dalam dialek lokal, dan tidak memiliki buku hingga kakak laki-lakinya membawanya dari sekolah.
Her father died when she was 10, and her mother decided that she did not need to continue on to high school, but her brother helped her change her mother's mind.
Ayahnya meninggal saat dia berusia 10 tahun, dan ibunya memutuskan bahwa dia tidak perlu melanjutkan ke sekolah menengah.
She came to love mathematics at her school, and was encouraged by her teachers and brother to continue her studies, with the idea that she could return to Martinsicuro as a mathematics teacher.
Ia mulai mencintai matematika di sekolah dan didorong oleh guru serta kakaknya untuk melanjutkan studi dengan tujuan menjadi guru matematika di Martinsicuro.
She earned a fellowship to study at the University of Bologna, where she earned a laurea in mathematics in 1989 with an undergraduate thesis on Green's functions for elliptic partial differential equations.
Ia mendapatkan beasiswa untuk belajar di Universitas Bologna, tempat ia meraih gelar laurea di bidang matematika pada tahun 1989 dengan skripsi sarjana tentang Fungsi Green untuk persamaan diferensial parsial eliptik.
At the suggestion of one of her professors at Bologna, she moved to the University of Chicago for her graduate studies, to study with Carlos Kenig.
Atas saran seorang profesornya di Bologna, ia melanjutkan studi pascasarjana di Universitas Chicago, di bawah bimbingan Carlos Kenig.
After postdoctoral studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Stanford University, and Princeton University, Staffilani took a tenure-track faculty position at Stanford in 1999, and earned tenure there in 2001.
Setelah studi pascadoktoral di Institute for Advanced Study, Universitas Stanford, dan Universitas Princeton, ia menjadi dosen di Universitas Stanford pada tahun 1999 dan memperoleh jabatan tetap pada tahun 2001.
While at Stanford, she met her husband, Tomasz Mrowka, a mathematics professor at MIT, and after a year and a half found a faculty position closer to him at Brown University.
Ia kemudian pindah ke Universitas Brown agar lebih dekat dengan suaminya, Tomasz Mrowka, seorang profesor matematika di MIT.
Staffilani is a frequent collaborator with James Colliander, Markus Keel, Hideo Takaoka, and Terence Tao, forming a group known as the "I-team".
Staffilani sering berkolaborasi dengan James Colliander, Markus Keel, Hideo Takaoka, dan Terence Tao, membentuk kelompok yang dikenal sebagai
Staffilani was a Sloan Fellow from 2000 to 2002.
Staffilani adalah penerima Sloan Fellowship dari 2000 hingga 2002.
In 2012 she became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.
Pada 2012, ia terpilih sebagai salah satu fellow perdana di American Mathematical Society.
Anal. 33 (2001), no. 3, 649–669. Colliander, J.; Keel, M.; Staffilani, G.; Takaoka, H.; Tao, T. A refined global well-posedness result for Schrödinger equations with derivative.
Colliander, J.; Keel, M.; Staffilani, G.; Takaoka, H.; Tao, T. Global well-posedness for Schrödinger equations with derivative.