| Frank Kelly | |
| Birth Date: | 1950 12, df=yes |
| Citizenship: | British |
| Field: | Optimisation Queueing theory Network theory |
| Alma Mater: | Durham University (BSc) University of Cambridge (PhD) |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Peter Whittle |
| Doctoral Students: | Ilze Ziedins |
| Known For: | Quasireversibility Dynamic Alternative Routing Congestion control Loss networks |
| Thesis Title: | The Equilibrium Behaviour of Stochastic Models of Interaction and Flow |
| Thesis Year: | 1976 |
| Thesis Url: | http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=|manuscrpdb|10297 |
Francis Patrick Kelly, CBE, FRS (born 28 December 1950) is Professor of the Mathematics of Systems at the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He served as Master of Christ's College, Cambridge from 2006 to 2016.
Kelly's research interests are in random processes, networks and optimisation, especially in very large-scale systems such as telecommunication or transportation networks. In the 1980s, he worked with colleagues in Cambridge and at British Telecom's Research Labs on Dynamic Alternative Routing in telephone networks, which was implemented in BT's main digital telephone network. He has also worked on the economic theory of pricing to congestion control and fair resource allocation in the internet. From 2003 to 2006 he served as Chief Scientific Advisor to the United Kingdom Department for Transport.
Kelly was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989. In December 2006 he was elected 37th Master of Christ's College, Cambridge. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to mathematical science.