Anthony Finkelstein

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Anthony Charles Wiener Finkelstein (born 28 July 1959 in London) is a British engineer and computer scientist. He is the President of City, University of London, and he previously served as the UK government’s Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security from 2015 to 2021.

Education and early life
Finkelstein was educated at University College School, the University of Bradford (BEng), the London School of Economics (MSc) and the Royal College of Art (PhD, 1985). His PhD thesis was on the application of information systems analysis to the design of complex systems.

Career and research
His work focuses on software development tools and processes and on applying systems modeling to the life sciences. He was Head of UCL Computer Science and then Dean of the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences. He served on editorial boards for ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. He has been a visiting professor at Imperial College London and the University of South Australia, and he worked with the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo. He helped found the Alan Turing Institute and has been involved with UKRI and the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

Honours and awards
Finkelstein is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) and, in 2025, a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is also a Fellow of Academia Europaea and a Fellow of the City and Guilds of London Institute. He has received numerous honours, including Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2016 and knighthood in 2022 for public service. Other awards include the Oliver Lodge Medal (IET) in 2009 and the IFIP Outstanding Service Award in 2013.

Personal life
His mother, Mirjam Finkelstein, was a Holocaust survivor and educator; his father, Ludwik Finkelstein, was a professor and was awarded the OBE. He is the grandson of Alfred Wiener and the brother of Daniel Finkelstein and Tamara Finkelstein, the latter a Permanent Secretary at DEFRA. He is married with two sons.