Skip to main content
UMass Collegiate M The University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • Visit
  • Apply
  • Give
  • Search UMass.edu
College of Engineering College of Engineering

Main navigation

  • Academics

    Academic programs

    Undergraduate programsGraduate programs4+1 Accelerated MS programsCertificate programsCourses
    See all academic programs
    AdmissionsTuition & financial aidAcademic advisingCareers & experiential learningStudy abroad for engineers
  • Research
    Research centers, institutes, and programsResearch areasUndergraduate researchResearch news & highlightsInnovation and Entrepreneurship
    Faculty ProfilesResearch development servicesCore facilitiesInstitute for Applied Life SciencesMGHPCC
  • Community
    Office of Diversity, Equity, and InclusionStudent OrganizationsMakerspacesAdvisory Boards and CouncilsNotable AlumniStudent VoicesInvited LecturesAwards Programs
    Industry Partnership ProgramEngineering ScholarshipsGive to Engineering
  • About
    Mission, vision & inclusivity statementStrategic PlanDepartmentsFaculty & StaffFaculty AchievementsLeadershipAccreditationContact
    Info for current studentsInfo for newly admitted studentsInfo for faculty and staffOpen Faculty PositionsVisit
  • News and Events
    NewsEvents

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. News

Harvard Medical School Appoints MIE Alumnus William La Cava as Assistant Professor

August 26, 2022 Community

Content

William La Cava
William La Cava

Dr. William La Cava, a doctoral graduate of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department under advisor Professor Kourosh Danai, has been accepted by the Harvard Medical School as an assistant professor on its faculty. La Cava had been serving as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology since 2016.

As La Cava wrote to Danai, “I wanted to let you know that I just accepted an offer of assistant professor from Harvard Medical School. I'll be working in the Computational Health Informatics Program at Boston Children's Hospital. I'm very excited to start my own lab!”

La Cava joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School in September of last year, but his appointment recently became official. Prior to that, he had been researching machine learning and biomedical informatics at Penn.

As La Cava says about his research, “I am interested in improving the interpretability and fairness of predictive models deployed in healthcare settings. I create and study AI algorithms that can embed these notions when training on health data. My research also looks at methods for automating data science as a whole.”

Basically, La Cava continues, “I would like my computer to do my job for me. That includes tasks like cleaning data, engineering features, writing code, and explaining scientific results. I am interested in applying my work in areas that improve social good.”

At Penn, La Cava was funded by a Pathway to Independence Award from the NIH. “I’m using this award to study methods for interpretable representation learning from electronic health records,” he said at Penn. “I work in the Computational Genetics Lab, which is part of the Institute for Biomedical Informatics. This group is dedicated to identifying the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to human health.”

Before Penn, as La Cava explains, he applied most of his research to wind energy, including identification and control of wind turbine dynamics and gearbox reliability. While studying in the UMass MIE department, La Cava researched in the UMass Wind Energy Center supported by the UMass IGERT Offshore Wind Energy Program.

At the Wind Energy Center, La Cava was interested in dynamics of wind turbines with focus on how wind turbine drivetrains can be optimized for offshore conditions. He was also interested in genetic algorithm approaches to system identification and wind turbine simulation.

Before coming to UMass, La Cava was a research engineer at the National Wind Technology Center in Boulder, Colorado, where he led the modeling team of the Gearbox Reliability Collaborative and conducted drivetrain test campaigns.

La Cava received his M.S. and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University. During his M.S. program, he led the mechanical power systems group for the Cornell 100+ MPG team that competed in the Automotive X-Prize.

(August 2022)

Article posted in Community

Related programs

  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Industrial Engineering

Related departments

  • Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

Site footer

College of Engineering
  • Find us on Facebook
  • Find us on YouTube
  • Find us on LinkedIn
  • Find us on Instagram
Address

Amherst, MA 01003
United States

Info for

  • Current students
  • Newly admitted students
  • Faculty and staff
  • Alumni

Academics

  • Academic programs
  • Departments
  • Academic advising

About

  • About the College of Engineering
  • News
  • Events
  • Faculty & Staff
  • Contact
  • Give to Engineering

Utilities

  • Email
  • SPIRE
  • Canvas
  • Online File Storage & Collaboration
  • People Finder

Global footer

  • ©2025 University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • Site policies
  • Privacy
  • Non-discrimination notice
  • Accessibility
  • Terms of use