Prof. Dr. Schilling had in space industry responsibility in Earth observation and interplanetary satellites (such as HUYGENS to the Saturnian moon Titan and ROSETTA for exploration of comets), before he was appointed professor and chair for Robotics and Telematics at University Würzburg. He was Consulting Professor at Stanford University 2002-2006, is now president of the research company „Center for Telematics (ZfT)“ and was founder of the company “S4 – Smart Small Satellite Systems GmbH”.

His team built the first German pico-satellite UWE-1, launched 2005 to optimize Internet in space. His satellites are on display in mayor museums such as Deutsches Museum Munich or Hermann-Oberth-Museum Feucht. He published more than 400 papers and received several awards, including the Walter-Reis-Award for Robotic Innovations 2008 (for research in mobile robotics) and 2012 (for medical robotics), an European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant 2012 for research on control of networked distributed satellite systems and an ERC Synergy Grant 2018 for “CloudCT” to improve climate models by observations from a formation of 10 small satellites. He was awarded with the Eugen-Sänger-Medal 2021 of the German Society for Aerospace (DGLR), the Global AACII Award in 2022, the Frank-F.-Malina-medal 2023 of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), and the Engineering Sciences Award 2025 of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) for his contributions to technology progress in small satellites. He is full member of the International Academy of Astronautics.