Professor Mary (Missy) Cummings is the director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University. She received her B.S. in Mathematics from the US Naval Academy in 1988, her M.S. in Space Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994, and her Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2004.
A naval officer and military pilot from 1988-1999, she was one of the U.S. Navy’s first female fighter pilots. She is currently a Professor in the Duke University Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, the Duke Institute of Brain Sciences, and the Duke Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. She is the co-chair for the World Economic Forum’s Council on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, as well as a member of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s advisory committee on autonomous transportation.
Her research interests include human supervisory control, human-unmanned vehicle interaction, human-autonomous system collaboration, human-robot interaction, human-systems engineering, and the ethical and social impact of technology.
