Kilham received the Phycological Society of America Career Achievement Award, and is the namesake of a professorship at the University of Michigan.
[4] Her PhD dissertation was entitled Deep sea bivalve molluscs: shell morphology, mineralogy and geochemistry.
[2] After finishing her doctorate, Kilham worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and in 1973 joined the faculty at the University of Michigan.
"[3] They also credited her research with prompting a United States Environmental Protection Agency policy regarding the control of endocrine disruptors.
[6] The two had married in 1967, and Peter Kilham was also a professor at the University of Michigan, and studied related topics including diatoms.