Summers received his undergraduate degree from the
University of California, Santa Cruz. He completed his PhD from the
University of California, Santa Barbara in 1984, where his PhD advisor was Rollin John Morrison. While he was a graduate student, Summers worked on Fermilab's experiment E-516, a pioneering study of charmed particles, which are
hadron particles containing one or more
charm quarks. He helped with the design, construction, and reconstruction program for the experiment's SLIC (segmented liquid ionization
calorimeter) and assisted
Michael Witherell with data analysis for this experiment. == Career ==