Ryan McGill named Auburn Engineering's 2020 President's Award winner

Recent computer engineering graduate Ryan McGill has been named the 2020 President’s Award winner for the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.

The recognition is the second significant accolade McGill has earned this year after he was named the most outstanding student in the computer engineering program.

“I am very honored to be selected as the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering President’s Award recipient,” McGill said. “I was surprised that I was given this award given that there are so many talented people that I have met throughout my college career that I feel like are just as deserving of recognition.”

In addition to maintaining a 4.0 GPA and serving as a Cupola Engineering Ambassador at Auburn University, McGill has been active in undergraduate research, most recently working on a small satellite project with a quantum communications payload.

In 2019, McGill interned at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, where his team, named ENVOY, or Enabling Natural-language Versatility and Opportunity, developed translation technology for sign language and won the lab’s Intern Innovative Idea Challenge. MIT sponsored his continued work on the ENVOY project throughout his senior year.

McGill will begin his career as a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

“I am excited to continue pursuing research as a full-time job, which I found was my passion while working for Dr. Mark Adams in the STORM lab,” McGill said. “His group gave me the opportunity to try out different projects and branches of electrical engineering, leading me where I am today.”

The President's Award recognizes one graduate in each Auburn University school or college who has completed at least three semesters at Auburn with a minimum grade-point average of 3.40 and possesses outstanding qualities of leadership, citizenship, character and promise of professional ability.

The #GINNing podcast team also sat down with McGill earlier this year. Hear the interview below: