I had a very broad set of interests and I chased them all. And it ended up giving me a lot of creativity."

Dr. Xu Simon is Chief Technology Officer for Enozo Technologies, a company that makes an ozone-based anti-bacterial treatment.

In our conversation on October 29th, 2022, we talked about some career accomplishments, failures, and learning. After graduating with her Bachelor’s degree from Rice University, Dr. Simon went directly to MIT for graduate school. As she continued through school, she noticed that the students who had taken a year or two after their bachelor’s would often graduate earlier than those who went directly to graduate school.

When she and her husband graduated with their doctorates, her husband became a AAAS fellow in DC, while worked in a U.S. Diplomatic anti-chemical weapons office as the only chemist. There she often acted as a translator between the scientists and the diplomats.

Having discovered the importance of this skill, she went back to school to get a Business degree, so that she could further develop her ability to communicate the business and science sides of a project.