Researcher biography

Simon is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering, Senior Research Fellow in the Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation and Director of the Functional Interfacial Materials and Membranes Laboratory (FIM2Lab) at The University of Queensland. His research is centred around the sustainable production and use of energy and chemicals. There are two distinct research programs. The first is technical in its focus – the development of enabling technologies and processes for the production of clean energy, materials and water.

He has 90 publications including 9 book chapters and 81 international journal articles at an h-index of 24, with two Highly Cited papers in chemistry and geoscience, and was selected as one of the 2018 Class of Influential Researchers by Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. Simon was awarded a prestigious Early Career Researcher Fellowship in 2012 from the Queensland Government to investigate silica based membranes for desalination applications in the coal seam gas industry.

In 2016, Simon was awarded a prestigious UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award for work on 'Low CO2 Iron and Petrochemicals Production'. And he was the Secretary for the Membrane Society of Australasia from 2011-2013, where he served on the board of directors from 2010-2014.

Simon also developed the ENGY0x version (open online course) of Energy Principles and Renewable Energy for the UQx platform.