All Speakers

Speaker Bio: Professor Mary (Missy) Cummings 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 a Professor in the George Mason University College of Engineering and Computing and is the director of the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center (MARC). 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. Her research interests include the application of artificial intelligence in safety-critical systems, assured autonomy, human-systems engineering, and the ethical and social impact of technology.

Speaker Bio: M. Elisabeth Paté-Cornell is the Burt and Deedee MacMurtry Professor in the department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, a department which she founded then chaired from January 2000 to June 2011. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1995, to its Council (2001-2007), and to the French Académie des Technologies (2003). She was a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-2004; 2006-2008), of the Boards of Trustees of the Aerospace Corporation (2004-2016), of InQtel (2006-2017) and of the Draper Corporation (2009-2016). She is a member of the NASA Advisory Council, and currently co-chairs the National Academies Committee on methods of analysis of the risks of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. She is a world leader in engineering risk analysis and risk management. Her research and that of her Engineering Risk Research Group at Stanford have focused on the inclusion of technical and management factors in probabilistic risk analysis models with applications to the NASA shuttle tiles, offshore oil platforms and medical systems. Since 2001, she has combined risk analysis and game analysis to assess intelligence information and the risks of terrorist attacks. More recently her research has centered on the failure risks of cyber systems and artificial intelligence in risk management decision. She is past president (1995) and fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, and a fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. She received the 2021 IEEE Ramo medal for Systems Science and Engineering, and the 2022 PICMET Award in Engineering Risk Management. She has been a consultant to many industrial firms and government organizations. She has authored or co-authored more than a hundred papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings and has received several best-paper awards from professional organizations and peer-reviewed journals.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Douglas C. Schmidt was sworn in as Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) on April 8, 2024. A Presidential appointee confirmed by the United States Senate, he serves as the senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense on operational and live fire test and evaluation of Department of Defense weapon systems. Prior to DOT&E, Dr. Schmidt served as the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Engineering in Computer Science, the Associate Chair of Computer Science, and a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems at Vanderbilt University. From 2010 to 2014, Dr. Schmidt was a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (AF SAB), where he served as Vice Chair of studies on cyber situational awareness for Air Force mission operations and on sustaining hardware and software for U.S. aircraft. He also served on the advisory board for the joint Army/Navy Future Airborne Capability Environment initiative. From 2000 to 2003, Dr. Schmidt served as a program manager in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Exploitation Office and Information Technology Office. Dr. Schmidt is an internationally renowned and widely cited researcher. Dr. Schmidt received Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in Sociology from the College of William and Mary, and Master of Science and Doctorate degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.