Stephan Tillmann

Stephan Tillmann is Professor of Geometric Topology in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney, a position he has held since 2020. He joined the University in 2011 as a Lecturer, progressing to Senior Lecturer in 2014 and Associate Professor in 2017. Prior to this, he served as Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the University of Queensland from 2009 to 2011, Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne from 2006 to 2009, and held postdoctoral fellowships at Université du Québec à Montréal from 2003 to 2006. Tillmann earned his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Melbourne in 2002, a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours from the same university in 1997, and completed earlier studies in Mathematics and Philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in 1996. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Sydney Mathematical Research Institute from 2022 to 2025 and was Deputy Director of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute from 2021 to 2023.

Tillmann's research focuses on geometry and topology, particularly low-dimensional manifolds, using techniques from algebraic geometry, hyperbolic geometry, and discrete mathematics. His work addresses triangulations, trisections, and the complexity of manifolds, funded by multiple Australian Research Council grants, including a Future Fellowship from 2018 to 2021, Discovery Grants on moduli spaces of geometric structures (2014–2016) and interactions between geometric and topological structures (2016–2018). Selected publications include 'On convex projective manifolds and cusps' with D. Cooper and D.D. Long (Advances in Mathematics, 2015), 'Deforming convex projective manifolds' with D. Cooper and D. Long (Geometry & Topology, 2018), and 'Minimal triangulations for an infinite family of lens spaces' with H. Rubinstein (Journal of Topology, 2009). He has received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2021 and the Faculty of Science Teaching and Learning Award from the University of Sydney in 2015. Tillmann is an editor for the Journal of Computational Geometry, has organized conferences such as 'Invariants in Low-Dimensional Topology' in 2024, and held visiting positions at institutions including the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.

Professional Email: stephan.tillmann@sydney.edu.au