Simon started his work at WPI after finishing the chemical engineering program at the University of Twente in 1995. His thesis work in the Netherlands was performed in the Industrial Processes and Products group (now Industrial Polymerization Processes) under supervision of Prof. Westerterp and Prof. Weickert. The work was entitled "The Design and Modeling of a Polymerization Fluidized Bed Reactor".

At WPI Simon completed a Masters Thesis with the Heat and Mass Transfer group in 1997 entitled "Computational Fluid Dynamics of Fixed Bed Heat Transfer".

Simon then took a position with Proctor and Gamble, Belgium.