Katja Simon trained as an Immunologist at the Deutsche Rheumaforschungszentrum, Berlin and during her PhD showed that TH1 cytokines are found in excess in human rheumatoid arthritis joints. For this, she was awarded the European League Against Rheumatism EULAR award.
After postdocs at the Centre d’Immunologie Marseille Luminy and at the Weatherall Institute in Oxford, where she focused on cell death pathways in the immune system, she became a principal investigator. With her team, she pioneered the field of autophagy in the immune system. Her group discovered that autophagy, the main cellular bulk degradation pathway, promotes differentiation of healthy red blood cells and neutrophils, and maintains long-lived cells such as stem and memory T cells. She also showed that it prevents ageing of immune cells and can be used to reverse immune senescence.
She has been a Wellcome investigator since 2015. In 2016 she moved to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Oxford and became a full professor. In 2022 she started a new group at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin with funding from the Helmholtz Society for distinguished professors. She received the 2018 Ita Askonas prize for outstanding achievements as a female European group leader in Immunology and became a fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.