Dick G. Simons studied physics and mathematics at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, where he graduated in 1983. He received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Leiden in 1988. His Ph. D. research topic involved the development of an imaging gas scintillation spectrometer for X-ray astronomy.
In 1990, he joined the Underwater Acoustics Group of the Physics and Electronics Laboratory of the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). Here his work concentrates on modeling of underwater acoustic propagation, evaluation of sonar performance models, matched-field processing, and inverse modeling. He is project leader of several extensive projects in these research fields. An example of such a project is PROSIM (PROpagation channel SIMulator), which is carried out under the Marine Science and Technology programme (MAST) of the European Community. This project focuses on the study of the effects of oceanographic variability (e.g., due to internal waves) on broad-band acoustic propagation. At present, he is program leader of all research concerning the ocean environment in relation to underwater acoustics. He has been a Member of the Scientific Committee of the 4th European Conference on Underwater Acoustics (Rome, September 1998) and is a Member of the Scientific Committee of the 5th European Conference on Underwater Acoustics (Lyon, July 2000). He is a lecturer in underwater acoustics at the Royal Netherlands Naval College, Den Helder, The Netherlands.