Simon received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and M.Sc. degree in microelectronics from Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, in 2008 and 2009, respectively. In 2013, he received the PhD in physics from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He was a Macquarie University Research Fellow, an ARC DECRA Research Fellow, and was awarded a Menzies Foundation Entrepreneur Fellowship and an ARC Future Fellowship. Simon is one of the founding members and CTO of Modular Photonics - a multi-award-winning spin-off from Macquarie University that commercialises 3D photonic waveguide devices. Simon’s research interests are the fundamental interaction of ultrashort laser pulses with dielectrics and the application of ultrafast lasers to optical materials processing in particular laser direct-writing of photonic waveguide devices for the use in telecommunication, astronomy, sensing, and information processing applications.