Prof. Dr Monika Simmler completed her law degree at the University of Zurich in 2014 and obtained her doctorate from the same university in 2017. During her doctorate, she initially worked as a research assistant to Prof. Dr Martin Killias at the University of St.Gallen and was then a visiting researcher at Columbia University in New York, the University of Oxford and the University of Vienna. In 2018, she returned to the University of St.Gallen as a postdoctoral researcher and habilitation candidate. From 2019 to 2021, she also worked at the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Canton of St.Gallen.

In April 2021, she took up an assistant professorship at the University of St.Gallen, where she served as co-director of the newly founded Competence Center for Criminal Law and Criminology. In 2023, she founded the Law & Tech Lab with colleagues from the Law School. In spring 2025, she was awarded her habilitation based on her thesis on the criminal responsibility of humans and machines and appointed as a private lecturer.

Research at the interface of criminal law and technology

Prof. Dr Monika Simmler conducts research in criminal law and procedural criminal law as well as in criminology. Her research focuses on topics related to the legal consequences of the use of technology and digital transformation. Various aspects can be distinguished here: In her habilitation thesis, she focused on the doctrine of attribution, i.e. the general part of criminal law. The habilitation answers the question of how responsibility is attributed when humans and (especially autonomous) technical systems interact.

In her project ‘Smart Criminal Justice’, Prof. Dr Monika Simmler examines the procedural implications of the use of technology by law enforcement authorities. The research project is one of the winners of the HSG Impact Awards 2025. It addresses current research questions such as the legality and regulation of AI use by public authorities. Closely related to this are Simmler's other areas of expertise in police and surveillance law, e.g. in the field of collecting electronic evidence from (internet) providers or police data processing.

Teaching in criminal law and procedural criminal law

As a committed university lecturer, Prof. Dr. Monika Simmler teaches at the assessment and Bachelor's level as well as at the Master's level. On the one hand, her teaching activities cover the basic criminal law curriculum (general part, special part, procedural criminal law, juvenile criminal law), where she has also published textbooks. She also teaches courses on the interfaces between criminal prosecution and IT in the Contextual Studies programme.