__NOTOC__ Mary Louise "Missy" Cummings (born 1966) is an American academic who is a professor at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

and director of Duke's Humans and Autonomy Laboratory.Duke Humans and Autonomy Laboratory
/ref> She was one of the United States Navy's first female

fighter pilot A fighter pilot is a military aviator trained to engage in air-to-air combat, air-to-ground combat and sometimes electronic warfare while in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft. Fighter pilots undergo specialized training in aerial warfare and ...

s. In November 2021, Dr. Cummings joined the

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA ) is an agency of the U.S. federal government, part of the Department of Transportation. It describes its mission as "Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes" rela ...

(NHTSA).

Education

Cummings received her Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the United States Naval Academy in 1988, a Master of Science in space systems engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994, and a PhD in

systems engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering util ...

from the University of Virginia in 2004. Her doctoral thesis was ''Designing Decision Support Systems for Revolutionary Command and Control Domains''.

Career

Michael_Toscano,_Missy_Cummings,_Shane_Harris

Cummings spent eleven years (1988–1999) as a naval officer and military pilot, earning the rank of

lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations. The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often sub ...

, and was one of the United States Navy's first female fighter pilots, flying an

F/A-18 Hornet The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is an all-weather, twinjet, twin-engine, supersonic aircraft, supersonic, carrier-based aircraft, carrier-capable, Multirole combat aircraft, multirole combat aircraft, designed as both a Fighter aircraft, ...

. She became a fighter pilot shortly after the Combat Exclusion Policy was repealed in 1993, and her book ''Hornet's Nest'' recounts her experience with discrimination and hostility as one of the first women in the fighter pilot community. Her first

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...

was ''

Medusa In Greek mythology, Medusa (; Ancient Greek: Μέδουσα "guardian, protectress"), also called Gorgo, was one of the three monstrous Gorgons, generally described as winged human females with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Those ...

'' and her second was ''

Shrew Shrews (family Soricidae) are small mole-like mammals classified in the order Eulipotyphla. True shrews are not to be confused with treeshrews, otter shrews, elephant shrews, West Indies shrews, or marsupial shrews, which belong to different fa ...

''. For her last tour in the Navy, Cummings was an NROTC instructor at Pennsylvania State University. After the Navy, she became an assistant professor at Virginia Tech in the school's Engineering Fundamentals Division. After obtaining her PhD at the University of Virginia, she achieved the rank of associate professor of

aeronautics Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...

and

astronautics Astronautics (or cosmonautics) is the theory and practice of travel beyond Earth's atmosphere into outer space. Spaceflight is one of its main applications and space science its overarching field. The term ''astronautics'' (originally ''astronaut ...

at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She became a full professor at Duke University in 2016. Cummings served on the Board of Directors for the automotive technology company Veoneer, Inc. from 2018 to 2021. She resigned and sold all of her shares in October 2021 prior to starting at the NHTSA. , Cummings is a professor in the Duke University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science. She is an affiliate professor with the University of Washington’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Department and an

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is a professional society for the field of aerospace engineering. The AIAA is the U.S. representative on the International Astronautical Federation and the International Council of ...

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

NHTSA appointment and responses

In October 2021, the Biden administration named Cummings as a new senior advisor for safety at the NHTSA on a "temporary assignment" through the

Intergovernmental Personnel Act The Intergovernmental Personnel Act of 1970 is a U.S. law specifying conditions for assigning workers to temporary duties across governmental boundaries, to or from the U.S. federal government and other governments and quasi-governmental organizatio ...

. Her appointment to the NHTSA was met with criticism from Tesla's CEO

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...

and personal harassment and

death threat A death threat is a threat, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or group of people. These threats are often designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behaviour, in which case a deat ...

s from Tesla advocates in response to her previous statements critical of Tesla.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation The United States secretary of transportation is the head of the United States Department of Transportation. The secretary serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all matters relating to transportation. The secre ...

Pete Buttigieg Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg ( ; ; Sometimes pronounced or , but not by Buttigieg himself. born January 19, 1982) is an American politician and former military officer who is currently serving as the United States secretary of transp ...

defended Cummings' appointment, and the NHTSA said that it was "look ngforward to leveraging her experience and leadership in safety and autonomous technologies."

National Transportation Safety Board The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incid ...

chair

Jennifer Homendy Jennifer L. Homendy is an American government official who is the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board in the Biden administration. Homendy has been the 44th member of the NTSB as of 2018. She has been chairwoman since August 13, 20 ...

surmised the Tesla advocates' responses to be a "calculated attempt to distract from the real safety issues". In January 2022, Cummings was required by NHTSA to recuse herself from any matters related to Tesla.

Focus and views

Cummings's research interests include human supervisory control,

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

, human-autonomous system collaboration and human-robot interaction, human-systems engineering, and the socio-ethical impact of technology. Cummings has written on the

brittleness A material is brittle if, when subjected to stress, it fractures with little elastic deformation and without significant plastic deformation. Brittle materials absorb relatively little energy prior to fracture, even those of high strength. Bre ...

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

and future applications for drones. In addition, she has spoken critically of the safety of Tesla's Full Self-Driving Capability surrounding its reliance on

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

References

External links

Hargrave Pioneers profile

Missy Cumming's profile on EngineerGirl.org
*
MIT Profile

Factually episode on autonomous driving featuring Cummings
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cummings, Mary 1960s births Year of birth uncertain Living people United States Naval Academy alumni Female United States Navy officers United States Naval Aviators American women aviators Naval Postgraduate School alumni University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Women systems engineers American women engineers Virginia Tech faculty MIT School of Engineering faculty Duke University faculty American women academics 21st-century American women