The William T. Patten Foundation, under the auspices of the IU Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs, has announced the speakers for the 2024-25 Patten Lecture Series: Odest Chadwicke Jenkins and Martha Gonzalez.

Odest Chadwicke Jenkins. Photo by Michigan Engineering Communications & MarketingJenkins, professor of robotics at the University of Michigan, will lecture during the week of Oct. 28 to 31, 2024.

A leader in robotics and artificial intelligence, Jenkins has an extensive, diverse research portfolio focusing on areas such as mobile manipulation, computer vision, interactive robot systems and human-robot interaction. He explores the fundamental building blocks of robot action and perception to enable robots to work with and assist diverse users, including older adults and people with disabilities.

Jenkins has also demonstrated national leadership in advocating for equity and inclusivity within the AI landscape. He has received numerous awards, among them a Sloan Research Fellowship and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Gonzalez, associate professor of Chicanx-Latinx studies at Scripps College and director of the Scripps College Humanities Institute, will lecture during the week of March 10 to 13, 2025.

Martha Gonzalez. Photo by Scripps CollegeA highly regarded scholar, Grammy Award-winning musician and community activist, Gonzalez’s research lies at the intersection of Chicana feminist theory, Chicana music, transnational musical dialogues, performance studies, ethnomusicology and feminist development theory. Her scholarship articulates the various ways in which Chicano/a, Latino/a and other communities of color — in the U.S and transnationally — use music and other forms of creative expression as necessary dialectic tools toward various social justice ends.

Gonzalez is a 2022 recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She is also the lead singer, songwriter and percussionist for East Los Angeles’s rock band Quetzal.

The William T. Patten Foundation, endowed by a student of the Indiana University class of 1893, provides generous funds to bring to the Bloomington campus for a week people of extraordinary national and international distinction in the sciences, the humanities and the arts. Past lecturers have included Oscar Arias, Jorge Luis Borges, Noam Chomsky, Natalie Zemon Davis, Umberto Eco, Julian S. Huxley, Evelyn Fox Keller, Toni Morrison, Martha Nussbaum, Amos Oz, Helmuth Rilling, Edward Said, Amartya Sen, Wole Soyinka, Rene Thom, Thomas Schelling, Strobe Talbott and Lester Thurow.

Inquiries about the Patten Foundation, the Patten Lecture Series and future nominations may be directed to vpfaa@iu.edu.