Simon Tomlinson studied physics at Manchester University, UK, and went on to gain a PhD in electrical engineering and to work as a research fellow in electronic applications and computational physics. In 1997 he joined the games industry as an AI programmer. He has worked on a variety of platforms and projects including billiard games, flight and space combat, racing games, FPS combat and card games including Poker. He has also worked as project lead on mobile Java platforms and had occasional forays into production and R&D. He has retained his academic interests with several game related publications and presentations in the UK and has assisted local academia in starting and running game programming courses. He has also written previously for Gamasutra. In 2008 he formed his own consultancy company, S1m On Ltd, and contributed to the highly acclaimed Need For Speed: Shift. More recently Simon has returned to mobile as an independent Android developer.