She joined the faculty in 2006. Originally from New Hampshire, Summerscales attended Andrews University and graduated in 1999 with a BS in mathematics and physics. She then went to graduate school at Penn State University and received a PhD in physics in 2006. While there, she worked with LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) which seeks to measure gravitational waves—the faint ripples in spacetime produced by cataclysmic astronomical events and predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. Her thesis dealt with what information could be learned from a supernova if the gravitational waves it produces are detected by LIGO.