Dr. Judy Simon took over the professorship of "Ecological Plant Nutrition" in April. After studying biology (RWTH Aachen) and biogeography (Saarland University), she completed her doctorate at the University of Melbourne (Australia) in 2007 on the topic of "Defense strategies in woody plants: Effects of cyanogenesis on functional characteristics in plants". In 2013, she completed her habilitation at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg on the topic of "Competition for nitrogen in temperate forest ecosystems".

Since 2014, she has conducted research at the University of Konstanz, initially as part of the deputy professorship "Physiology and Biochemistry of Plants", and from 2017 as a DFG Heisenberg Fellow with her own research group "Plant Interactions Ecophysiology". Research visits have taken her to Scandinavia and Asia, among other places.

In Witzenhausen, she will investigate both physiological and ecological aspects of ecological plant nutrition. In order to answer the interdisciplinary questions, experiments will be carried out both under controlled conditions and in the field and innovative methods and approaches will be used in addition to traditional ones.