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.