Frank Kelly is Professor of the Mathematics of Systems in the University of Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989, and a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2012. In 2013 he was awarded a CBE for services to mathematical sciences. His main research interests are in random processes, networks and optimization. He is especially interested in applications to the design and control of networks and to the understanding of self-regulation in large-scale systems.

He has served as Director of the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge, on the Scientific Board of HP's Basic Research Institute in Mathematical Sciences, the Scientific Council of EURANDOM, the Conseil Scientifique of France Telecom, and the Council of the Royal Society. He has chaired the Advisory Board of the Royal Institution/University of Cambridge Mathematics Enrichment Project, and the Management Committee of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. 

He spent the academic year 2001-2 as a visiting professor at Stanford University. From 2003 to 2006 he served as Chief Scientific Adviser to the United Kingdom's Department for Transport. He was chair of the Council for the Mathematical Sciences from 2010 to 2013, a member of the RAND Europe Council of Advisors from 2008 to 2015, and Master of Christ's College from
2006 to 2016.