Autonomous vehicles need to process enormous volumes of constantly changing and unpredictable data from sensors and detectors in order to make decisions, such as whether to change lanes. Summers has received a $500,000, five-year Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation to support his research to develop such control systems and networks. As an example of an application of his work, Summers said robust control systems are needed to reduce the risk of cyberattacks that have caused malfunctions in some autonomous vehicles. “Control networks need to allow the grid to operate with large amounts of wind and solar energy,” Summers said. We need to rethink the control architecture of the grid.”Summers leads the Control, Optimization, and Networks Lab, where he and students conduct research on autonomous systems, including Super COMO, an autonomous, artificial intelligence vehicle.