[1][2] Her research has included studies of ancient amber, showing that unlike liquids glass does not flow.
[3] She is the head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University.
[2] Simon grew up in Wichita, Kansas, the daughter of a schoolteacher and a technical salesman for the aircraft industry; she was directed towards chemical engineering by a high school mathematics teacher.
She became an undergraduate at Yale University, where she competed in the Yale swimming team, serving as captain of the team for two years,[1] and was named an All-American for 1982 by the College Swimming Coaches Association of America for the backstroke in NCAA Division I.
[2] Simon was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2010, after a nomination from the APS Division of Polymer Physics, "for pioneering contributions to the understanding of the thermal and mechanical properties of bulk and nanostructured polymeric glasses".