A Naval officer and military pilot, Cummings was one of the U.S. Navy’s first female fighter pilots, and among the first female graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy. She is now the Professor and Director of George Mason University’s Autonomy and Robotics Center (MARC).  She holds faculty appointments in the Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science Departments. She is an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Fellow and recently served as the senior safety advisor to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Cummings received her BS in Mathematics from the U.S. Naval Academy, her MS in Space Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, and her PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.  She comes to George Mason University from her former position at Duke University.