She directs the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Urban Design and Planning and the Urban Ecology Research Laboratory. She teaches courses in Urban Ecology, Environmental Planning, Geographic Information Systems, and Group Dynamic and Conflict resolution. She also teaches an Advanced Course in Research Design. Her research interests are in the impacts of alternative urban development patterns on ecosystem dynamics. She is the Principal Investigator on a number of grant-funded research projects aiming to study cities as hybrid ecosystems and the emergent properties of urbanizing regions. Her research also focuses on urban resilience and innovation in coastal cities and eco-evolutionary dynamics. She leads research on modeling and strategic foresight. Her work involves the development of metrics and indicators of urban environmental performance that can be used to monitor progress and inform policy-making and scenario planning. She is especially interested in advanced interdisciplinary approaches to urban ecological problems. Her book entitled Advances in Urban ecology (Springer 2008) synthesizes the state of knowledge on the complex interactions between of urbanization and ecological function and articulate the challenges for scholars of urban ecosystems. In her forthcoming book (2016) “Cities as Hybrid Ecosystems,” Alberti advances the hypothesis that cities may play a key role in the Earth’s eco-evolutionary dynamic.