Her research work is in the area of wood anatomy (softwoods and hardwoods) and paleontology (late cretaceous and early tertiary fossil woods),[2][3][4]
Most of her pioneering research work has been jointly made with the Dutch botanist, Pieter Baas.[5]
During the years 1972–1976, she worked as a curatorial assistant and honorary research fellow at the Bailey-Wetmore Laboratory of Plant Anatomy and Morphology at Harvard University. In 1976, Wheeler became an assistant professor at North Carolina State University in the Department of Wood and Paper Science, where she worked continually until 2008, when she retired as a full professor.
Wheeler has coordinated the NCSU initiative for the creation of the InsideWood, a unique and versatile purely-educational database[7][8][9] containing thousands of wood anatomical descriptions and over 66,000 photomicrographs, and its free, open coverage is worldwide.[10]
The standard author abbreviation Wheeler is used to indicate this scientist as the author, when citing a botanical name,[15][16] e.g. Alangium oregonensis Scott & Wheeler.