'I Don't Know How Professors Teach Without Fighter-Pilot Experience'

Missy Cummings’s father was in the Navy, but he urged her to go into the Air Force because he thought it was a better environment for women. Still, she entered the Navy, becoming one of the service’s first female fighter pilots. While her mother, a teacher, wasn’t against the idea, she was glad when Cummings finished serving and became a professor and the director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University.

Cummings’s experience in the military heavily influenced her research interests. Once she realized how frequently pilot error was causing fatal accidents among her colleagues, she began asking questions: “Why are people crashing? Isn’t there something we can do about it?” That curiosity propelled her to focus on automation.

Recently, I spoke with Cummings about her first job writing congratulatory letters on