Her doctoral thesis was Designing Decision Support Systems for Revolutionary Command and Control Domains.

After obtaining her PhD at the University of Virginia, she became an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[19][20] U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg defended Cummings' appointment, and the NHTSA said that it was "look[ing] forward to leveraging her experience and leadership in safety and autonomous technologies.

[23][24] Cummings's research interests include human supervisory control, artificial intelligence, human-autonomous system collaboration and human-robot interaction, human-systems engineering, and the socio-ethical impact of technology.

[26] In addition, she has spoken critically of the safety of Tesla's Full Self-Driving Capability surrounding its reliance on computer vision.