Profile
Prof. Sir Anthony Finkelstein CBE FREng DSc MAE FCGI
Anthony Finkelstein is the President of City St George's, University of London and Professor of Software Systems Engineering.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is also a Member of Academia Europaea, a Fellow of City & Guilds of London Institute and a Distinguished Fellow of RUSI (the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies). He has an Honorary DSc from City, University of London and from the University of Bradford. He is an Honorary Fellow of UCL. He was granted the title of Knight Bachelor in the New Year's Honours 2022 for public service. He was previously appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to computer science and engineering.
He is a member of Council of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Chair of the Police Science Council established by the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC). He is a member of the DfE National Implementation Board for the Reform of Children's Social Care.
Until taking up the role of President he was Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security to HM Government, a senior strategic and operational role that involves leadership of science, research and innovation across the UK's national security community. Whilst undertaking this role he retained a position at University College London (UCL) and as a Fellow of The Alan Turing Institute, the UK national institute for AI and data science, of which he was a founding trustee.
Prior to this he was Dean of UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences and before that Head of UCL Department of Computer Science. He held a Chair in Software Systems Engineering at UCL, having started his career at Imperial College, Department of Computing.
He is a Visiting Professor at Imperial College London, University of South Australia and formerly at the National Institute for Informatics, Tokyo, Japan.
He is a graduate in systems engineering holding a BEng, MSc and PhD, and is a professional Fellow of the Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET) and the British Computer Society (BCS) and has been active in both, serving on numerous Boards and Committees. He received the Oliver Lodge Medal of the IET for achievement in Information Technology. He has been recognised for his professional service by IFIP, IEEE and the ACM. He was a member of the winning team of the first Times Higher Education ‘Research Project of the Year’. He has served on numerous editorial boards including that of ACM TOSEM and IEEE TSE, and was founder editor of Automated Software Engineering. He also chaired and presented keynote talks at numerous international meetings. He was General Chair of the International Conference on Software Engineering.
He has served twice on the Council (Governing Board) of the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He has served on the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) panel for Computer Science and Informatics and prior to that the Research Assessment Exercise. He was a member of the Committee of Visitors for the US National Science Foundation.
He has provided consultancy advice to a very large number of high-profile companies and government organisations. He has acted as an expert in complex technology disputes. He was awarded the UCL ‘Entrepreneurial Spirit’ award, an institutional honour marking his contributions to knowledge transfer. He has established three successful ‘spin-out’ companies (including two ‘exits’) providing respectively professional services, product software and an innovative software service. He served on the Board of UCL Business, UCL’s technology transfer office.
He has a particular interest in embedding public engagement in all aspects of the work of engineering and has been awarded the UCL ‘Provost’s Award for Institutional Leadership in Public Engagement’. He has chaired the Royal Academy of Engineering Ingenious Awards supporting public engagement with engineering. He is committed to engineering education and has organised national and international events for students. He was part of the team that established a University Technical College in East London.
