In October 1973, while visiting friends in America, she was offered employment at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study chemical carcinogens in tissue cultures, then a recently developed technique.

She presented her work in many international conferences and at the Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, England, where she was invited to participate in the Program on Models of Epidemics.

[6][7] Within this context, she was involved in organizing a conference in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on the emergence and resurgence of diseases, where she led the workshop on Mathematical Modeling.

In the late 1990s, Awerbuch-Friedlander was co-investigator in a project, "Why New and Resurgent Diseases Caught Public Health by Surprise and a Strategy to Prevent This" (supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).

Some of her research papers were the result of collaboration with students through the course Mathematical Models in Biology, which had large portions dedicated to infectious diseases.

[5] Awerbuch-Friedlander also chaired the planning committee for the 85th birthday celebration of Richard Levins,[8] founder of the Human Ecology program in the Global Health and Population Department of the Harvard School of Public Health, a three-day conference with the Hegelian theme "The Truth is the Whole" held in mid-2015 at the Harvard School of Public Health, focusing on the manifold contributions in models of complexity theory and holistic research from mathematical biologist Levins and his colleagues, students, and disciples, who broadly are interested in complex systems biology.

The September 2018 book, The Truth Is the Whole: Essays in Honor of Richard Levins (ISBN 0998889105/9780998889108), in which she was co-editor with Maynard Clark and Dr. Peter Taylor, includes parts of the proceedings from over 20 contributors from that Harvard symposium.

"[12] Encouraged by her mentors, Richard Levins and Marvin Zelen, Awerbuch-Friedlander sought "nearly $1 million in lost wages and benefits, as well as a promotion at the HSPH"[13] and argued "that Fineberg refused to promote her to a tenure-track position because she is a woman, despite the positive recommendation of the HSPH's selection committee of appointment and re-appointment (SCARP).

[15] Her sex discrimination lawsuit was based upon Harvard's denial of tenure to her, despite her significant accomplishments in her fields of expertise, biomathematics, epidemiology, biostatistics and public health.