Since the early 2000s, she organized and carried out research on conditions that lead to the emergence, maintenance, and spread of
epidemics. Her research encompasses
sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs) such as
HIV/AIDS, as well as
vector-borne diseases, such as
Lyme disease,
dengue, and
Zika virus and
Zika fever. Awerbuch-Friedlander recently researched the spread and control of
rabies based on an eco-historical analysis. Her work is interdisciplinary, and some of her publications are co-authored with international scientists and members of different departments of the HSPH and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some of her analytical mathematical models led to fundamental epidemiological discoveries, for example, that oscillations are an intrinsic property of
tick dynamics. 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. Awerbuch-Friedlander was a founding member of the New and Resurgent Disease Working Group. 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). At Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Awerbuch-Friedlander co-chaired the committee on Bio- and Public Health Mathematics. 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. She was interested in public health education and has developed for high school adolescents educational software based on models for determining the risk that an individual with certain risky sexual behaviors actually would become infected with HIV. These models helped risk-prone youth, parents, educators, community health leaders, and public health researchers explore how changes in sexual behavior impact their probability of contracting HIV. 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.
Sex-discrimination suit against Harvard Although
Theda Skocpol had alleged gender bias in denial of tenure as early as 1980, Awerbuch-Friedlander was believed to be the first female Harvard Faculty member to file a lawsuit against Harvard University for sex discrimination. The suit was "filed with the Middlesex County Superior Court in June 1997." 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" 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)." and in
Science's SCIENCESCOPE two months later. 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. The University argued that no tenure track positions were open in her new department, after she had been reassigned from one department to another. It has been argued that proving sex discrimination in the sciences is very difficult. ==Notable students==