Simmons went to Durham University, where she studied Physics and Chemistry of Materials. As a postgraduate at St Aidan's College she was awarded a PhD on "The characterisation of CdTe-based epitaxial solar cell structures fabricated by MOVPE" in 1992 for research supervised by Andrew W. Brinkman.
Career and research
In the 1990s Simmons worked as a Research Fellow in quantum electronics alongside Michael Pepper at the Cavendish Laboratory in the UK where she gained an international reputation for her work in the discovery of the 0.7 feature and the development of 'hole' transistors. In 1999, she was awarded a QEII Fellowship and went to Australia, where she was a founding member of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computer Technology. She made the Australia Day address for NSW in 2017 and spoke about the importance of setting high expectations for students. She made it clear that Australians need to set the bar high and tell their students they expect them to jump over it. She said, "It is better to do the things that have the greatest reward; things that are hard, not easy." Simmons also criticised the lowering of standards in physics education in the HSC curriculum, in which an effort has been made to make physics more appealing to girls by substituting mathematical problem-solving with qualitative responses, remarking that the curriculum had a "feminised nature". When Simmons was made Australian of the Year in 2018, she spoke about the importance of not being defined by other people's expectations of you. She said, "Don't live your life according to what other people think. Go out there and do what you really want to do." She is passionate about encouraging girls to pursue a career in science and technology. “Seeing women in leadership roles and competing internationally is important. It gives them the sense that anything is possible,” she said.
Achievements
Simmons is well-known for creating the field of atomic electronics. Since 2000 she has established a large research group dedicated to the fabrication of atomic scale devices in silicon and germanium using the atomic precision of scanning tunnelling microscopy. Her research group is the only group worldwide that can create atomically precise devices in silicon—they were also the first team in the world to develop a working "perfect" single-atom transistor and the narrowest conducting doped wires in silicon. Simmons has published over 400 peer-reviewed journal papers amassing over 9,000 citations, written five book chapters and published a book on nanotechnology. She has also filed seven patents and delivered over 200 invited and plenary presentations at international conferences.
Simmons has resided in Australia since 1999, taking citizenship in 2007. She is married to Thomas Barlow, a novelist and business analyst. They have three children.
