Following her residency and fellowship, Winston joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. In the late 1990s, Winston received an $8.7 million grant from
State Farm Insurance to examine data from 28,000 car crashes in 15 states. As an
assistant professor of pediatrics, Winston was the co-recipient of the 1995
American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Melville Medal for her paper "An Analysis of the Time-Dependent Changes in Intracellular Calcium Concentration in Endothelial Cells in Culture Induced by Mechanical Stimulation." She also founded and directed TraumaLink at
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The aim of TraumaLink was to focus on all phases of an injury in order to identify modifiable risk factors for poor injury outcome. As a result of her "biomechanical and psychological foundation of pediatric trauma prevention and treatment," Winston was the recipient of the 2003 Judson Daland Prize from the
American Philosophical Society. Winston was awarded the 2007 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award by the National Quality Forum and the Joint Commission. She was honored for her "commitment to combining biomechanical engineering, public health, and psychologic methodologies to promote safety and prevent injury among children from motor vehicle crashes." She was also elected a Fellow of the
American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2011 for her "visionary leadership as both pediatrician and engineer in clinical research, practice, and training for the prevention of child injury." Throughout her tenure at UPenn, Winston was appointed to the Distinguished Chair in the Department of Pediatrics at CHOP and as the Scientific Director of the
National Science Foundation Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies. In 2017, she was elected a member of the
National Academy of Medicine In 2019, Winston was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. During the
COVID-19 pandemic, Winston received the 2021 Association for Clinical and Translational Science Distinguished Investigator Award for Translation from Clinical Use into Public Benefit and Policy. ==Personal life==