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.[4]
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".[6] She also became a fellow of the North American Thermal Analysis Society in 2003, of the Society of Plastics Engineers in 2005, and of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2015.[5]
She was named P. W. Horn Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at Texas Tech in 2010.[7]
She was the 2014 winner of the Mettler Toledo Outstanding Achievement of the North American Thermal Analysis Society,[5] and the 2019 winner of the International Award of the Society of Plastics Engineers, the first woman to win the society's highest award.[8]
