Kleinerman worked at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) from 1979 to 2019 where she served as a staff scientist and deputy chief of the Radiation Epidemiology Branch.

[2] Kleinerman's early research included investigations on long-term effects of curative radiotherapy for cervical cancer, benign gynecological disease, and peptic ulcers.

She also contributed to the first comprehensive mortality study in physicians conducting fluoroscopically guided interventional procedures, which reported an increased risk of leukemia in radiologists who graduated before 1940.

She organized a large case-control study of radon and lung cancer in cave dwellers in China that included evaluation of other exposures such as cooking oil mutagenicity.

Research on cooking fuels and indoor air pollution continues within the division and has been shown to be a significant risk factor for lung cancer among never-smoking women.