Irene Finocchi obtained a Laurea degree (summa cum laude, M.Sc. equivalent, GPA 30/30, 1997) and a PhD in Computer Science (2002) from the University of Rome "La Sapienza", where she is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science.

Her research interests include the design, theoretical analysis, and experimental evaluation of algorithms and data structures, focusing on fault-tolerant algorithms, parallel and distributed computing, graph algorithms, experimental algorithmics, graphs and software visualization. Her scientific results have been published in high quality journals and peer-reviewed international conferences. Her papers have been often selected among the best papers of several conferences on theoretical computer science, and invited to appear in the corresponding journal special issues. She has co-authored various handbook chapters on selected topics in algorithmics, and two books in Italian, edited by McGraw-Hill, on the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures.

She has been PC co-chair of ALENEX'09, the 11th SIAM Workshop on Algorithm Engineering and Experiments, has served on the program committee of many major conferences in the field of algorithmics (including SODA, ICALP, ESA), and has been involved in the organization of several international events, among which the 45th IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science in Rome. She is regularly invited to give lectures in international universities and research centers, such as Schloss Dagstuhl and the Oberwolfach Institute, and is co-winner of a Distiguished Paper Award at OOPSLA 2011, the 26th Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications.