MSU's McDonald earns Gates Cambridge Scholarship

Andrew McDonald, an Honors College senior majoring in Computer Science in the College of Engineering; and Advanced Mathematics, and Statistics in the College of Natural Science has been named a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

Andrew is the 6th Gates Cambridge Scholar from Michigan State University.

Andrew was awarded the Alumni Distinguished Scholarship and a Professorial Assistantship from the Honors College. As a member of the D-CYPHER Lab, he developed machine learning-based algorithms to control and coordinate multi-robot systems used in environmental sensing applications, receiving the Goldwater Scholarship in 2021 in recognition of his contributions. Andrew currently serves as a research assistant to Professor Pang-Ning Tan in the DMiner Research Lab and is a lead mentor for computer science outreach programs including Spartan Girls Who Code and Technovation. Andrew is also a Marshall Scholar and was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship.

Andrew was raised in Midland, Michigan, and Hudson, Ohio and graduated from Hudson High School.

At the University of Cambridge Andrew plans to pursue a joint MRes + PhD in AI for the Study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER). The Marshall Scholarship will fund his MRes degree, and the Gates Cambridge Scholarship will fund his PhD degree.

Read the full announcement on the Honors College website.