Building technology to improve lives

Summers’ professional interests lie in “pervasive computing,” a concept of embedding computer technology into a vast range of devices that connect with one another. Together these devices could support our daily lives in limitless ways.

The Stanwood, Wash., resident wants to devote at least part of his career to building and improving self-driving cars. Because these cars communicate with one another, they have the potential to avert accidents, perhaps saving thousands of lives, he says.

He has always loved tinkering with “robots and other contraptions.”



At age 10, Summers constructed a Lego model of a Star Wars Blockade Runner spaceship that won second place at the Washington State Fair, one of the biggest fairs in the world and the largest in the Pacific Northwest.

He went on to build his first computer from assorted parts. As a teenager, he earned the rank of Eagle Scout by designing and building an entrance kiosk and campsite signs for a new park near his home.

He was also consumed by online computer games, despite his father’s suggestion that he redirect his time to more worthy pursuits.

“What could you do with your time if you weren’t on your computer so much?” his father would ask.

“My rebellious self didn’t want to listen,” Summers confesses.

“What could you do with your time if you weren’t on your computer so much?”

E. Kevin Summers’ question to his son when Ryan he was a teenager



In 2013 he came to the WSU Pullman campus as a Regents Scholar with plans to major in electrical engineering. (He later switched to a computer engineering major.)

Near the end of his freshman year, Summers noted how much time and mental energy he was spending playing computer games. He realized that he was missing opportunities. While he was at WSU, he needed to take advantage of everything that the University offered.

He made a decision: Game over.