Born and raised in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Mike McDonald received his BSc in Mathematics and Statistics and BScH in Astrophysics at Queen's University. Under the guidance of Stephane Courteau, he completed a near-IR survey of the Virgo cluster for his MSc thesis, titled "The Surface Brightness Distribution of Virgo Cluster Galaxies". This work, in collaboration with Brent Tully at the University of Hawaii, has been accepted for publication in MNRAS.

Mike is now at the University of Maryland, working with Sylvain Veilleux on his PhD thesis, which will involve extensive use of the brand new Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter to examine various properties of distant clusters of galaxies.