Upon completing postgraduate work at the Medical Research Council’s Clinical Research Centre, Harrow “emigrated” to the USA to take up a postdoctoral position at New York University School of Medicine. After 15 years, holding different positions in different universities in the USA, he returned to the UK to take up the Chair in Molecular Immunology at the University of Leeds.  In 2008, he took up the position of Professor of Mucosal Immunology at UEA-MED and leader of the Gut Biology Research Programme, which eventually became part of the Gut Health and Food Safety (GHFS) Programme, that is integral to the research agenda of The Quadram Institute. 

He is the Research Leader in Norwich Medical School, member of Norwich Institute for Healthy Aging and Gastroenterology and Gut Biology. He also holds the group leader position in Quadram Institute.

The overarching objective of Prof. Simon Carding’s research is to understand how a healthy gut is established and maintained throughout life, and to understand how this healthy state is altered in diseases of the gastrointestinal tract (e.g. IBD), as well as diseases elsewhere in the body (e.g. ME/CFS). This includes other organ systems such as the brain, where he is exploring the gut-brain axis and dementia.