Kilian is a professional conference interpreter accredited to the European Institutions and the European Patent Office with ample experience in the fields of international arbitration, politics and diplomacy. As professor at the University of Geneva and director of the Interpreting Department he has been training conference interpreters as well as interpreter trainers at the highest level. His research interests include cognitive aspects of multilingual and multimodal processing as well as ethical considerations affecting the interpreting process. He has been involved in the development of online training platforms, blended learning courses and self-administered online training modules for conference.

Kilian completed his undergraduate training in translation and interpreting at the University of Vienna, did his graduate work in interpreting at the University of Geneva and his post-doctoral research in psycholinguistics at the University of York.