In 2003, she received her doctorate from the University of Oxford for research, supervised by Lance Miller, and in collaboration with Alan Heavens, on gravitational lensing.

[clarification needed] In 2009 she was awarded a starting grant from the European Research Council (ERC) and was subsequently appointed a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh.

She led the Shear Testing Programme STEP1 competition[8] and co-leads the lensing collaboration of the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey: CFHTLenS.

[9][10] Heymans is one of the leaders of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) project Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS).

[12][13] Heymans teaches on the Massive open online course (MOOC) at Coursera on AstroTech: The Science and Technology behind Astronomical Discovery.