Finley held an interest in science and math since an early age and so pursued engineering, stating that it was an "analytical decision" for her: "I had this equation -- what am I good at, what am I interested in, and how do those things fit together?"[3] Finley studied chemical engineering at Florida A&M University, graduating summa cum laude.[4] She went on to study at Northwestern University for her graduate program, working with Linda Broadbelt and Vassily Hatzimanikatis. During her doctorate she developed a computational framework, BNICE, to predict novel biodegradation pathways with applications for bioremediation.[5] Finley was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, where she worked with Aleksander S. Popel. There she studied the signaling pathways of VEGF, a protein that contributes to angiogenesis. She created a physiologically-based computational framework to study VEGF kinetics and transport that can better inform cancer therapies.[6]
Research and career
Finley started her computational systems biology lab at USC Viterbi in 2013. Her lab leverages computational models to interrogate angiogenesis, metabolism, and immunotherapy. Finley's lab has built mathematical models to predict CAR T cell response to variations in protein expression.[7]
In 2017 Finley was appointed the Gordon S. Marshall Early Career Chair Director for Computational Modeling of Cancer. She is also an active participant in increasing diversity in STEM, either by visiting middle and high schools or through panels to encourage under-represented minorities to pursue STEM careers.[4][8]
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