Westwood Lecture Series spring lineup announced

Purdue President Mung Chiang has announced the spring lineup for the Westwood Lecture Series, which provides an opportunity for university faculty to interact with colleagues on scholarly work from a wide range of fields.

The Westwood Lecture Series is a program aimed at enhancing the intellectual vibrancy of Purdue’s campus.

Each lecture will take place from 4:30-5:30 p.m. at Westwood, the Purdue president’s residence.

Space is limited to the first 50 faculty who register online, unless otherwise noted. Registration will be available beginning two weeks prior to each lecture. Look for details in Purdue Today.

Spring 2026 Westwood Lecture Series events

Feb. 10: Sooyeon Jeong, assistant professor of computer science in the College of Science, will discuss developing socially interactive AI agents for enhancing human flourishing.

Jeong’s research focuses on designing and deploying interactive AI agents that can improve people’s lives by providing personalized support based on each user’s needs, traits and behaviors. She deploys these agents “in the wild” to evaluate how they build relationships/rapport with people over time and improve their well-being, health and learning. She aims to build relational technologies to be more than just tools and become helpful companions for people by continuously adapting themselves to help users achieve their health goals.

April 14: Mark Suchman, professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts, will discuss the interrelationship of law, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Suchman’s research interests center on the impact of legal institutions on organizational and economic life, with a particular focus on how legal conditions create — or foreclose — opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship and technological change. Perhaps best known for his theoretical work on organizational legitimacy, he has also conducted major empirical studies on the role of law firms in Silicon Valley, the governance challenges posed by new information technologies in health care and the sequential structure of the entrepreneurial start-up process.

May 5: Allie Gabriel, the Thomas J. Howatt Chair in Management in the Mitch Daniels School of Business, will discuss what research reveals about helping employees thrive across work and home.

Gabriel is the faculty director of the Center for Working Well. Her research examines how employees navigate the emotional, motivational and relational demands of modern work and how these experiences shape their well-being across work and nonwork domains. She is especially known for her scholarship on recovery, emotion regulation and women’s experiences in the workplace, including issues tied to women’s health and motherhood. Her work often leverages within-person and person-centered approaches to capture how experiences unfold in daily life.

This lecture will be open exclusively to members of the Purdue University Retirees Association and reflects Purdue’s commitment to offering meaningful educational and social opportunities for retirees who remain closely connected to the university.