Finkelstein's scientific work is in the broad area of software development tools and processes. He has also worked on applications of systems modelling in the life sciences. He was appointed President of City, University of London in June 2021. 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 was Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security to HM Government from 2015 until 2021. This is a senior role, associated with the Government Office for Science (GOScience) and working across the UK's national security community. During his tenure in post Finkelstein retained a chair in Software Systems Engineering at
University College London (UCL) and a Fellowship at the
Alan Turing Institute of which he was a Founder Trustee. Prior to his government role, Finkelstein was the Head of UCL
Computer Science and then Dean of the
UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences. He served on the editorial boards of
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology and
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. He was appointed in 2013 as a Member of Council of the UK
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) by the then Minister for Universities and Science,
David Willetts. He was appointed as the UK government's
Chief Scientific Adviser for
National Security in December 2015. Finkelstein is a visiting professor at
Imperial College London, at the
University of South Australia and formerly at the
National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan. He was until 2022 a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the
Singapore National Research Foundation and previously served on the Board of the NHS
Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH). ==Honours and awards==