Dr. Simonyan received her medical degrees (M.D. and Dr. med.) from Yerevan State Medical University in Armenia and Georg-August University in Germany and a Ph.D. degree in Neurobiology from the TiHo University of Hannover in Germany. She completed her residency in Otolaryngology and a clinical research fellowship in Movement Disorders, Neurolaryngology, and Neuroimaging.

Dr. Simonyan studies the neural mechanisms of normal and diseased speech production and other complex voluntary motor behaviors. Her clinical research program is focused on isolated focal dystonia, a debilitating neurological movement disorder causing involuntary muscle spasms in different body regions. Her methodological approach bridges brain imaging, machine learning, computational neuroscience, genetics, and clinical trials.

Her recent studies have mapped the large-scale neural architecture underlying speech production and its impairments in laryngeal dystonia. Her research helped define the current view of isolated focal dystonia as a functional and structural neural network disorder. This work led to identifying a neural biomarker for the objective diagnosis of focal dystonia using a deep learning platform, DystoniaNet. She has also identified a new oral drug, sodium oxybate, for the treatment of alcohol-responsive laryngeal dystonia and voice tremor.