Dr. Weissman received a Ph.D. in epidemiology from Yale University School of Medicine in 1974. Her research is on understanding the rates and risks of mood disorders in families using methods of epidemiology, genetics, neuroimaging, and the application of these findings to develop and test empirically based treatments and preventive interventions.

Her current interest is in bringing psychiatric epidemiology closer to the translational studies in the neurosciences and genetics and on using electronic health records for research. She directs 3-generation study of families at high and low risk for depression who have been studied clinically for nearly 40 years and who have participated in genetic and imaging studies. She directed a multicenter study to determine the impact of maternal remission from depression on offspring. She was one of the PIs in a multicenter study to find biomarkers of response to the treatment of depression. Along with her late husband Gerald Klerman, she developed Interpersonal Psychotherapy, an evidence-based treatment for depression, now with over 140 clinical trials, translated into numerous languages and recommended by the WHO and the US Preventive Taskforce of Perinatal Depression as one of the evidence-based psychotherapy.

In 2009, she was selected by the American College of Epidemiology as 1 of 10 epidemiologists in the United States, who has had a major impact on public policy and health. The summary of our work on depression appears in a special issue of the Annals of Epidemiology, Triumphs in Epidemiology, April 2009. In 2016, she was listed as one of the 100 highly cited authors, according to Google Scholar Citations (H Index (Sept 2021) 182 i110 Index 680). In 2020, she received the Brain and Behavior Pardes Humanitarian Award. In 2021, she received the research award from the American Psychiatric Association.In 2023 she received an award for her research on mood disorders from the American College of Psychiatrists.