Simon Greaves received his B.Sc. and Ph.D degrees in physics at Salford University in 1989 and 1992, respectively. From 1993 to 1996 he carried out research into magnetic tape and other magnetic materials at the University of Wales, Bangor.

In 1996 he moved to the Research Institute of Electrical Communication (RIEC) at Tohoku University and began to work on spin valves and micromagnetic simulations. From 2000 to 2003 he was a staff engineer at Hoya Corporation, involved in the development of hard disk media products.

In 2003 he returned to Tohoku University to join the information storage systems group in RIEC. His research interests include: magnetic recording and signal processing, information storage devices, and spintronic devices for neuromorphic computing. He is an editor of IEEE Transactions in Magnetics, has been an organising committee member of the Intermag and TMRC conferences, and has served as an AdCom member of the IEEE Magnetics Society and as a director of the Magnetics Society of Japan.