Michael LoCascio

Michael is a Graduate Research Assistant in the Wind Engineering Laboratory at Stanford University, advised by Catherine Gorlé. He is also a Graduate Student Researcher with the Wind Energy Science group at the National Wind Technology Center, a research facility of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where he is mentored by Chris Bay and Tony Martínez-Tossas. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University; he received his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford in 2023 and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA in 2020.

His research in wind energy lies at the intersection of fluid mechanics, optimization, uncertainty quantification, and controls. His interests include wake modeling, wind farm layout optimization, wind farm control, and computational fluid dynamics. He has helped develop modeling tools such as FLOWERS, FLORIS, and AMR-Wind.

Michael spends his free time cooking, reading, making music, and playing beach volleyball.