Dr. Finch is a professor of gerontology and biological sciences with adjunct appointments in the Department of Psychology, the Department of Physiology and the Department of Neurology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Finch’s major research interest is the study of genomic controls of mammalian development and aging.

He received his undergraduate degree in 1961 from Yale, where he majored in biophysics. He continued his work in cell biology and received his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1969. Dr. Finch has received many of the major awards in biomedical gerontology, including the Robert W. Kleemeier Award of the Gerontological Society of America in 1985, the Sandoz Premier Prize by the International Geriatric Association in 1995, the Irving Wright Award of AFAR and the Research Award of AGE in 1999. He has directed the National Institute on Aging-funded Alzheimer Disease Research Center since 1984. He is a member of 10 editorial boards.

Dr. Finch has written more than 450 articles. In 1990, he published Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome, a major intellectual synthesis of aging. In 1995, Dr. Finch and Robert Ricklefs published Aging: A Natural History (Scientific American Library Series), intended for the general public and translated into five languages. He co-authored, with Thomas Kirkwood, Chance, Development, and Aging (Oxford: 2000). His latest book, The Biology of Human Longevity: Inflammation, Nutrition, and Aging in the Evolution of Lifespans, was published in July 2007.