She is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, where she also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Education.
[1] She joined the General Motors Institute of Technology (now Kettering University) as an instructor in 1992, and became a regular-rank faculty member there in 1993.
She returned to the regular faculty ranks in 2015 as an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and (by courtesy) in the Department of Education, and in 2019 was promoted to full professor.
[1] She was named an IEEE Fellow in 2021, "for leadership and scholarship in engineering education".
[3] In 2022, the University of Michigan College of Engineering gave Finelli their Trudy Huebner Service Excellence Award, "for her decades of leadership and vision in the area of engineering education and her commitment to serving the academic community".