His research addresses problems from biology (especially biomechanics) and engineering that can be studied with the tools of applied mathematics and continuum mechanics.
His thesis Drag Reduction by Self-Similar Bending and a Transition to Forward Flight by a Symmetry-Breaking Instability was advised by Michael Shelley.
This work was published 2002 in Nature under the title Drag Reduction Through Self-Similar Bending of a Flexible Body,[3] and was the subject of various news articles in periodicals including The New York Times[4] and others.
[5] As a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard, Alben collaborated with Ernst A. van Nierop and Michael P. Brenner in a paper titled "How Bumps on Whale Flippers Delay Stall: An Aerodynamic Model".
This result, featured in MIT's Technology Review[7] and Nature,[8] provides a theoretical basis for potential improvements in using bumps for more stable airplanes, more agile submarines, and more efficient turbine blades.