Professor Malcolm Macdonald

Electronic and Electrical Engineering

Personal statement

Supporting science and engineering communication to make it more easily accessible, especially to under-represented groups, I provide comment to national & international, specialist & mainstream media, across written word, audio, & visual. I have also worked as a consultant for radio and TV dramas, as well as novels.

Distinguished through my role in shaping the future of the space sector, both nationally and internationally, with experience of working in industry, government, and academia, as well as the interface to each, I have been recognised in the media as “Scotland's leading space expert". My research was applied in development of UK’s first commercial CubeSat, and Scotland 1st spacecraft, launched in 2014, and I've delivered capacity building, and aided development of satellite technology and satellite applications around the world.

I am the Director of the Centre for Signal and Image Processing (CeSIP), and also the Director of the Applied Space Technology Laboratory (ApSTL) within CeSIP, which I founded and where I lead a team of staff and PGR students.

I am a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Space Research (C-Space), University College Dublin, Vice-Chair of the Space Technology Advisory Committee of the UK Space Agency, and an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics. I am also a member a Non-Executive Director of Weather Stream Inc., and a Council Member of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Previously I was the Founding Director of the Scottish Centre of Excellence in Satellite Applications, SoXSA (2014 - 2020), and a Non-Executive Board Member of UK Space Agency (2017 - 2020).

Expertise

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Area of Expertise

Space Mission Analysis & Design
Space Technology
Astrodynamics
Swarm Engineering
Network Systems
Systems Engineering
Technology Roadmapping and Analysis
Technical Foresight & Horizon Scanning
Advanced Concepts
CubeSats
Modelling & Simulation

Prize And Awards

CompleNet Best poster award: Recipient; 23/4/2024
Galileo Masters EUSPA Space for FUN Challenge (2nd place): Recipient; 8/11/2021
2nd place in Copernicus Masters 2020: BMVI Transport Challenge: Recipient; 8/12/2020
Finalist in E&T Innovation Awards 2020: Recipient; 19/11/2020

More prizes and awards

Publications

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Publications

CubeSat flight software : insights and a case study: Eshaq Mohammed, Zitouni M Sami, Atalla Shadi, Al-Mansoori Saeed, Macdonald Malcolm; Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, pp. 1-18 (2025); https://doi.org/10.2514/1.A35882
Efficient orbit determination using measurement-directional state transition tensor: Zhou Xingyu, Qiao Dong, Macdonald Malcolm, Li Xiangyu; IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (2025); https://doi.org/10.1109/TAES.2025.3527410
Analytical propagation solution for planet-displaced orbit in the presence of third-body perturbations: Zhou Xingyu, Qiao Dong, Li Xiangyu, Macdonald Malcolm; Acta Astronautica Vol 229, pp. 149-160 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2025.01.019
Space and time!: Bouis Agathe, Clark Ruaridh, Macdonald Malcolm; Doctoral School Multidisciplinary Symposium (DSMS) 2024 (2024)
Time to agree: Bouis Agathe, Clark Ruaridh, Macdonald Malcolm; CENSIS Technology Summit 2024 (2024)
An autonomous distributed timing signal in-space as alternative to GNSS time synchronisation: Bouis Agathe, Clark Ruaridh A, Macdonald Malcolm; 75th International Astronautical Congress (2024)

More publications

Research

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Research Interests

The Applied Space Technology Laboratory is addressing global challenges by working at the boundaries between disciplines to deliver a step-change in the democratisation, exploration, and exploitation of space.

Developing new space and adjacent sector technologies in response to global challenges and anticipated demands, accelerating the democratisation of the use of space, and the data and services it provides.
Developing technologies and algorithms to process the exponentially increasing data available from space to help us better understand our Earth, and to make this knowledge available to all.
Developing insights to network systems across the natural sciences to engineer vastly more connected, efficient, and sustainable space systems.

Our work has an end-to-end focus on the development and application of systems by ensuring an understanding of the end application. Challenging conventional ideas and working at the interface between disciplines we seek to advance new concepts in the exploration and exploitation of space. Specifically, our research applies systems engineering concepts in, and applications of space technology by developing research into astrodynamics, networked systems, swarming, and de-centralised and collaborative systems.

Professional Activities

Path detection and tidal channel mapping using NNR graphs: Speaker; 23/4/2024
Remote Sensing of the Ocean, Sea Ice, Coastal Waters, and Large Water Regions 2023: Participant; 4/9/2023
Climate Finance Innovation: Connecting Financial Technology, Space Data and Resilient Timing: Organiser; 9/5/2023
Space Meets FinTech (Joint FinTech Scotland / Space Scotland Event): Invited speaker; 11/1/2023
Alignments in functional connectivity networks: Contributor; 8/11/2022
Integration of an LED/SPAD Optical Wireless Transceiver with CubeSat On-board Systems: Contributor; 28/9/2020

More professional activities

Projects

Reaching New Heights: Strengthening the Scotland Ireland Partnership with Satellite Data (Strathclyde UCD research feasibility study): Owens, Steven Robert (Principal Investigator) Bowden, James (Co-investigator) Cummins, Mark (Co-investigator) Macdonald, Malcolm (Co-investigator) McKee, David (Co-investigator) White, Chris (Co-investigator); 01-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2025
Magnetostatic Simulations: Yuan, Weijia (Principal Investigator) Macdonald, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Zhang, Min (Co-investigator); 06-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2024
Decentralised Autonomous Community in Space: Macdonald, Malcolm (Principal Investigator) Clark, Ruaridh (Research Co-investigator) Probert, Beth (Researcher); The space industry is currently at an inflection point, transitioning from a state where access to space was limited to a select few nations to a state of mass-participation and data availability. The NewSpace era, characterised by the proliferation of access to space and the focus on lowering barriers to entry, is driving this change. The number of spacecraft in low-Earth orbit, and the data and services they provide, is growing exponentially and will continue to do so over the coming decade. However, our current methods for conceiving and operating space systems have remained largely unchanged since the dawn of the space age. This not only limits our ability to fully exploit space-based data and services, but also poses a risk to the safety and sustainability of the space environment.

The lack of meaningful legislation in place to sustain space for future generations highlights the urgent need for action. Much like the urgent action needed to address the climate crisis, we must act now to ensure the sustainability of space for future generations.

As spacecraft become increasingly connected, they will transition into an Internet of Things, IoT, sensor node, forming an Earth-encompassing, pervasive and ubiquitous network of distributed, taskable computing systems and sensors with high Byzantine fault tolerance. This project aims to accelerate and exploit this transformation, ensuring a sustainable space environment through an incentivised and voluntary system of coordinated movements to ensure situational awareness and self-separation. This will instigate a fundamental transformation in how we conceive and operate spacecraft, allowing for machine-to-machine, M2M, tasking and enabling the shift towards large networks of cooperative, self-organising satellites in a sustainable space environment. This will deliver radically new space services and businesses.

The project will lay the foundations for transforming space operations into a Decentralised Autonomous Community (DAC). A DAC is controlled by its members through a distributed digital ledger, such as Blockchain, rather than being influenced by government(s), international treaties, or large corporate interests. The rules-based order is maintained on the ledger and participation is motivated through collective self-interests. The DAC provides a platform for community decisions reached through consensus, such as a sequence of required orbital manoeuvres to ensure self-separation, while ensuring immutability of data and immunity to censorship.

The project will develop both the concept and methods for Decentralised Autonomous Community in Space, DACS, addressing the sustainability of our space environment while also enabling M2M tasking through smart contracts. Ultimately, this project aims to transform how we perceive, design, operate, and exploit space systems, ensuring a sustainable future for space exploration and utilisation.; 01-Jan-2024 - 01-Jan-2027
Offshore Servicing Coordination & Assessment with Remote Sensing (OSCAR): Macdonald, Malcolm (Principal Investigator) Clemente, Carmine (Co-investigator) Werkmeister, Astrid (Researcher); 01-Jan-2023 - 15-Jan-2025
SAR consultancy to UCD: Clemente, Carmine (Principal Investigator) Macdonald, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Werkmeister, Astrid (Co-investigator); 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2025
EO4SECURITY-MicroDoppler: Clemente, Carmine (Principal Investigator) Macdonald, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Tubaldi, Enrico (Co-investigator); 07-Jan-2023 - 06-Jan-2024