Biography

With more than 25 years of research experience, Simons' interests have spanned a range of subject areas in the realm of theoretical condensed matter and biological physics. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, in 1994 Simons moved to a Royal Society research fellowship and proleptic appointment as a lecturer at Imperial College. In the following year, he took up a lectureship at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge (and was elected to a Fellowship at St. John’s College). He was promoted to a Readership in 1999 and then to a personal chair in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics in 2002. In 2010, he was elected to his current post as the Herchel Smith Chair in Physics. As well as his affiliation with the Department of Physics, where he heads the Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics group, he holds an Associate position at the Wellcome Trust/CRUK Gurdon Institute and is a Principle Investigator at the Wellcome Trust/MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. He has held visiting positions at NEC Research Inc. in Princeton and Harvard University. Alongside his long-standing interests in condensed matter physics, his recent research activities have centred on the development and application of theoretical approaches to address the function and regulation of complex biological systems.