Dr. Finch is Professor of Gerontology and Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California, with adjunct appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Neurology. His major research interest is genomic controls of mammalian development and aging, with a focus on gene-environment interactions in brain aging and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Dr, Finch received his undergraduate degree in 1961 from Yale, where he majored in biophysics. His Ph.D. work at Rockefeller University in 1969 explored neuroendocrine mechanisms in stress responses of aging mice. Further work documented glial and neuronal aging during middle-age in healthy humans and rodents; alternate amyloid aggregation to toxic oligomers; hormonal and nutritional influences on glial neurotrophic activity during aging; and most recently, that air pollution promotes inflammation and amyloidogenesis, worsened by ApoE4. In 1984, Finch founded the USC Alzheimer Disease Research Center.

Dr. Finch’s awards include the Robert W. Kleemeier Award of the Gerontological Society of America in 1985, AAAS Fellow in 1987; 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.

Dr. Finch has written 600 articles and six books. In 1990, he published Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome, an evolution-based framework for biological aging. In 2000, he co-authored, with Thomas Kirkwood, Chance, Development, and Aging. His latest book is The Role of Global Air Pollution in Aging and Disease (Academic Press, 2018).