In Profile: Missy Cummings
Mary (Missy) Cummings was exhilarated the first time she landed a fighter jet aboard an aircraft carrier in 1989, but the young pilot's elation didn't last long. Seconds later, a close friend died while attempting the same landing on the back of the carrier. “I can't tell you how many friends died because of bad designs,” says Cummings, recalling the crash that occurred on the U.S.S. Lexington in the Gulf of Mexico. “After spending so much time as a pilot, I found it incredibly frustrating to work with technology that didn’t work with me.”It wasn’t until Cummings left the Navy after 10 years and chose to pursue a PhD in systems engineering that she realized she could help improve the severely flawed designs of the technological systems she used as a pilot — from confusing radar screens and hand controls to the nonintuitive setup of cockpits — by making an...