Professor Steven Simon earned a BSc degree from Brown in Physics & Mathematics in 1989 and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Harvard in 1995. Following a two-year post-doc at MIT, he joined Bell Labs, where he was a director of research for nine years. He is currently Professor of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.

His research is in the area of condensed matter physics and communication, including subjects ranging from microwave propagation to high temperature superconductivity. He is interested in quantum effects and how they are manifested in phases of matter. He has recently been studying phases of matter known as "topological phases" that are invariant under smooth deformations of space-time. He is also interested in whether such phases of matter can be used for quantum information processing and quantum computation.