 Gilman is known for his contributions to the field of material science (dislocations in ceramics, disclinations in polymers, and new metal glasses).Gilman designed a tetrahedral truss different from Buckminster Fuller's famous 1953 truss in 1981.Gilman attributed the strength of his tetrahedral truss to "the inherent rigidity of the skeletal triangle" and "the rigidity of the basic tetrahedron".