[7] He was the inaugural chair of the Selection Committee that chooses the annual Sloan Awardees for the outstanding math and science teachers in the New York City public high schools and served in this position from 2009 to 2019.

Weinbaum is widely recognized for novel biomechanical models that have changed existing views in such areas as bone fluid flow and mechanotransduction (how bone cells sense mechanical forces),[8][9] vulnerable plaque rupture (principal cause of cardiovascular death),[10][11] the role of the endothelial glycocalyx in initiating intracellular signaling,[12] microvascular fluid exchange, revised Starling hypothesis now referred to as Michel-Weinbaum model for capillary filtration,[13] endothelial transport aspects of arterial disease,[14] glomerular-tubular balance in the renal tubule,[15] and bioheat transfer (Weinbaum-Jiji equation for microvascular heat exchange between blood and tissue).

[16] In each case he resolved a long-standing “mystery” by discovering either a new structure-such as micro-calcifications in the fibrous caps of vulnerable lesions or leaky junctions for transport of LDL across vascular endothelium- or a new function for a known structure –such as by demonstrating that the glycocalyx on endothelial cells senses the fluid shear stress of the blood flow and transmits it to the intracellular cytoskeleton.

He has also proposed a new concept for a high speed train where lift is generated by a giant ski riding on a soft porous material in a channel with impermeable side walls.

[citation needed] As an untenured professor he was almost fired in 1969 for his role in supporting Black and Hispanic students in their takeover of the City College campus in their protest against existing admission policies.

In 1988 he received the Public Service Award of the Fund for the City of New York from Mayor Edward Koch for his role in recruiting women and minority faculty and students to the Grove School of Engineering.

Weinbaum then turned his attention to encouraging high achieving underrepresented minority (URM) students to go to graduate school and pursue a PhD in a series of grants from the Sloan Foundation and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH 1997–2013.