[1][2] In 2021 she was appointed Director of the Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge, and N.M. Rothschild & Sons Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge, but continued to hold a part-time position at Oxford.

She read for a PhD under the supervision of Ralph Cohen at Stanford University, where she was awarded her doctorate in 1990.

[9] Tillmann was awarded the Bessel Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2008[10] and was the Emmy Noether Lecturer of the German Mathematical Society in 2009.

[11] She was elected as president-designate of the London Mathematical Society in June 2020 and took over the presidency from Jonathan Keating in November 2021.

[13] In October 2021 she became the director of the Isaac Newton Institute, taking a post which lasts for five years.