Simon’s began his career as an electronics engineer at UCL where he gained BSc (1st Class Honours) and PhD degrees (winning UCL’s Barlow Prize). This was followed by a period at the Applied Physics Lab at Stanford.
After leaving Stanford, he co-founded a venture capital funded start-up company in Silicon Valley making metrology equipment for the semiconductor industry, helping to raise over $14M.
His business career has been focussed on the development, manufacture and international sales of high technology capital equipment in organisations ranging in size the start up in California (managing a team of 75 engineers) to QinetiQ where he was Managing Director of the Sensors and Electronics Division (responsible for 1500 staff and a turnover of £150M). Before joining QinetiQ he spent 10 years with Oxford Instruments as CTO and MD of a number of OI’s businesses, all focussed on the manufacture of instrumentation for industrial applications.
He then spent a period of time as CEO of the Forensic Science Service and was responsible for its orderly wind-down when the UK Government decided to close the business.
Before joining the University of Birmingham, Simon was Deputy Director Strategy and Planning at Innovate UK. In this role he was closely involved in the IUK component of the National Quantum Technology Programme (NQTP) and sat on the NQTP Strategic Advisory Board.