Andrei was born in Bucharest, Romania where he grew up. At age 18, he moved to the US to attend Harvard College where he earned a degree in Chemistry. During his time there, he developed synthetic inorganic chemistry skills under the supervision of prof. Ted Betley. Following his bachelor's, Andrei decided to stay in Cambridge, MA and started his Chemistry PhD in the lab of prof. Mircea Dinca at MIT. In the Dinca lab, Andrei works at the interface of inorganic chemistry and material sciences and focuses on synthesizing novel metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) either via direct synthesis or via the development of new post-synthetic modification methodologies, targeting applications ranging form small molecule reactivity to electrochemistry.