Stacey Finley is the Nichole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professor and associate professor of chemical engineering and materials science, and quantitative and computational biology at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

. Finley has a joint appointment in the department of chemical engineering and materials science, and she is a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Finley is also a standing member of the MABS Study Section at

NIH The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

. Her research has been supported by grants from the

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

, and

American Cancer Society The American Cancer Society (ACS) is a nationwide non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating cancer. The ACS publishes the journals ''Cancer'', '' CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians'' and '' Cancer Cytopathology''. History The society w ...

Early life and education

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?" Finley studied chemical engineering at

Florida A&M University Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), commonly known as Florida A&M, is a Public university, public Historically black colleges and universities, historically black land-grant university in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. ...

, graduating summa cum laude. She went on to study at

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

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 Bioremediation broadly refers to any process wherein a biological system (typically bacteria, microalgae, fungi in mycoremediation, and plants in phytoremediation), living or dead, is employed for removing environmental pollutants from air, wate ...

. Finley was a postdoctoral fellow at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

, where she worked with Aleksander S. Popel. There she studied the signaling pathways of

VEGF Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF, ), originally known as vascular permeability factor (VPF), is a signal protein produced by many cells that stimulates the formation of blood vessels. To be specific, VEGF is a sub-family of growth factors ...

, 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.

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. 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. In 2022, she served as a visiting professor at EPFL -

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (, EPFL) is a public university, public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 1969 with the mission to "train talented engineers in Switzerland". Like its sister institution E ...

Awards and honors

Her awards and honors include: * 2006 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship * 2008 Merck Poster Award * 2010-2021 UNCF/Merck Postdoctoral Science Research Fellowship * 2010 National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award * 2011 Elmer Gaden Jr. Award from the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering * 2013-2017 Gabilan Assistant Professorship (2013-2017) * 2014 National Academy of Engineering Participant in Frontiers in Engineering Education Symposium * 2015 Diverse: Issues in Higher Education Emerging Scholar Award * 2015 Emerging Scholar Award from the publication Diverse: Issues in Higher Education * 2015 Rose Hills Foundation Research Fellowship * 2016 Keystone Symposia Fellow * 2016

National Science Foundation CAREER Award The National Science Foundation CAREER award is the most prestigious award presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States Federal Government to support junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through rese ...

* 2016 CMBE Young Innovator * 2016 National Academy of Engineering Frontiers in Engineering * 2017 Leah-Edelstein Keshet Prize, Society of Mathematical Biology * 2017 Hanna Reisler Mentorship Award * 2017 USC Viterbi Junior Research Award * 2017-2021 Gordon S. Marshall Early Career Chair * 2018 Outstanding Young Engineer, Orange County Engineering Council * 2018 American Association for Cancer Research NextGen Star * 2021 Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering * 2022–Present, Nichole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professorship * 2022 Fellow, Biomedical Engineering Society

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Finley, Stacey American geneticists American biologists University of Southern California faculty Florida A&M University alumni Northwestern University alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American women biologists 21st-century American women