A former biochemist, she has been broadcast on ABC Radio National, and written for publications such as Science, The Lancet, Nature Medicine, The Bulletin, New Scientist, The Age and The Monthly.
[1] In 2019, Finkel was awarded a Doctor of Laws honoris causa from Monash University and the Medal of the Australian Society for Medical Research.
Finkel then started a PhD in biochemistry at University of Melbourne's Department of Medicine titled "Studies of the 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D3 receptor".
In post-doctoral research, she spent one year in John Baxter's laboratory at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), working on the regulation of the human growth hormone gene.
This was followed by four years in Patrick H. O'Farrell's laboratory at UCSF, investigating the genes that sculpt a fruit fly egg into an embryo – work that was published in Nature.