Talent and fun! Our Summer School shines on its second day

Energized after yesterday’s fantastic opening day, we embarked on the second day of this second edition of our International Summer School on LLM-based Agents for Software Engineering (LLMA4SE). A strong sense of camaraderie had already settled in among participants, setting the perfect stage for another full schedule of technical talks and cultural activities.

The morning kicked off with Cristina Improta, who delivered an insightful presentation titled “Human vs. AI Code: Understanding Systematic Differences and Their Root Causes”. Cristina explored the structural differences between human-written and AI-generated code, unpacking their underlying causes and sparking a lively discussion among attendees.

Next up, José Luis Redondo brought an industry perspective with his talk, “From retrieval to reason & action: building language-steerable discovery systems at Spotify”. He shared how global-scale platforms are shifting from simple search mechanisms to language-driven systems with reasoning and action capabilities—a deeply relevant case study for everyone present.

The morning wrapped up with Priyansh Trivedi’s thought-provoking session, “Beyond Pass Rates: Does clean code matter for coding agents?”. Priyansh challenged us to look beyond functional pass rates, raising key questions about whether readability and maintainability still matter when AI generates the code.

After a great networking lunch, the afternoon was dedicated to an immersive hands-on workshop led by Pietro Liguori, titled “Benchmarking the quality of AI-generated code”. Across technical deep-dives, participants evaluated synthetic code quality firsthand, working with advanced metrics and practical scenarios in an engaging, collaborative setting.

Once the lab session concluded, we shifted gears to the evening’s social program. We visited the renowned Helga de Alvear Museum of Contemporary Art for a guided tour. Walking through its striking modern architecture and exploring landmark contemporary artwork offered a refreshing break and a wonderful cultural experience.

The day culminated in our long-awaited Gala Dinner at Restaurant Casa Palacchio. Enjoying traditional local dishes with a fine-dining twist alongside plenty of laughter and great conversations, speakers, students, and organizers came together in a historic venue that truly strengthened our growing community.

We closed Day 2 on a high note, excited for the final stretch tomorrow—packed with fresh insights and a few surprises!

Interested in our research, curious about our projects, or looking to collaborate with us? Get in touch with our team!

If you have made it this far, we encourage you to read our previous entry or our next entry, or consult the summary of the second edition of the International Summer School on LLM-Based Agents for Software Engineering in Cáceres.