Silas D. Alben

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.