Caleb Finch Ph.D.
ARCO/ Keischnick Professor of Gerontology and Biological Science and University Professor, Director, Gerontology Research Institute. Cell biology, mechanisms controlling postnatal development and aging in man and other mammals, Alzheimer's disease. *Chair, National research Council Committee on Biodemography of Aging: Bringing Bioindicators to household surveys. *Chair, Symposium on Slow Aging (SOSA), Sept 22-23, USC

Dr. Finch is a Professor of Gerontology and Biological Sciences, and a founding member of the Departments of Molecular Biology and Neurobiology. He also holds adjunct appointments in the Dept of Psychology, Dept of Physiology and Dept of Neurology. He is also one of USC's 12 University Distinguished Professors. Dr. Finch's major research interest is the study of genomic controls of mammalian development and aging.

He received his undergraduate degree from Yale in 1961, where he majored in biophysics. He continued his work in cell biology and received his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1969. Dr. Finch has received most of the major awards in biomedical gerontology, including the Robert W. Kleemeier Award of the Gerontological Society of America in 1985, the Sandoz Premier Prize by the International Geriatric Association in 1995, and the Irving Wright Award of AFAR and the Research Award of AGE in 1999. He has directed the NIA-funded Alzheimer Disease Research Center since 1984. Dr. Finch became a University Distinguished Professor in 1989, an honor held by twelve other professors at USC who contribute to multiple fields. Dr. Finch supervises three predoctoral fellows and four postdoctoral fellows and two research faculty. He is a member of ten editorial boards. He has written over 350 articles. In 1990 he published a major intellectual synthesis of aging: Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome.

In 1995, Dr. Finch and Robert Ricklefs published Aging: A Natural History ( Scientific American Library Series) for the general public. It has been translated into five different languages. In 2000, Chance, Development, and Aging was co-authored with Thomas Kirkwood, Oxford Press . His most recent book, single authored, is The Biology of Human Longevity. Inflammation, Nutrition, and Aging in the Evolution of Lifespans. Academic Press 2007. His latest book, co-authored with Thomas Kirkwood was published by Oxford in 2000: Chance, Development, and Aging.

Finch and Eileen Crimmins have developed a unique interdisciplinary upper division course (Health, Stress, & Aging), which combines biomedical, demographic, and psychosocial perspectives.

Most recent papers are:

Pan F, Chiu CH, Pulapura S, Mehan MR, Nunez-Iglesias J, Zhang K, Kamath K, Waterman MS, Finch CE, Zhou XJ. (2007) Gene Aging Nexus: a web database and data mining platform for microarray data on aging. Nucleic Acids Res. 35(Database issue):D756-9. -PubMed

Morgan TE, Wong AM, Finch CE. (2007) Anti-inflammatory mechanisms of dietary restriction in slowing aging processes. Interdiscip Top Gerontol. 35:83-97. -PubMed

Crimmins EM, Finch CE. (2006) Commentary: do older men and women gain equally from improving childhood conditions? Int J Epidemiol. 35(5):1270-1 -PubMed

Finch CE. (2006) A perspective on sporadic inclusion-body myositis: the role of aging and inflammatory processes. Neurology. 66(2 Suppl 1):S1-6. -PubMed

Crimmins EM, Finch CE. (2006) Infection, inflammation, height, and longevity. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 103:498-503. -PubMed

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