Simi is a member of the Institute of Cellular Medicine in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Newcastle. She chairs the Athena SWAN steering group for her Institute.

She was also the coordinator of the POSAT FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN and IDP (2014-2017), the latter of which was a joint academic/industry PhD training programme also run with Durham (Pohl and Cobb).

She was the recipient of the Muslim News Award for Excellence in Science Technology (2015).