The 2025 edition of the Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School (LxMLS 2025) was held from July 19th to 25th, gathering over 150 students for a six-day in-person event, dedicated to exploring the fields of machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP).
As in past years, the event – now celebrating 15 years of collaboration – was held at Instituto Superior Técnico,, with continued support from the CMU Portugal Program. The school covered a wide range of cutting-edge topics in AI and Machine Learning, including learning theory, neural networks, sequence models, transformers, causality, and vision & language.
This year’s edition included the participation of several CMU Portugal faculty members and alumni, and featured a distinguished lineup of speakers.
Among them was André Martins, a CMU Portugal alumnus and current VP of AI Research at Unbabel, a CMU Portugal Industrial Affiliated company; Zita Marinho, a Research Scientist at Google DeepMind and Dual Degree Ph.D. alumna in Computer Science and Robotics (Técnico | Robotics Institute at CMU); and Isabel Trancoso, CMU Portugal faculty member and researcher (Técnico | INESC-ID), who served on the Steering Committee. She was joined by Fernando Pereira, member of the CMU Portugal External Review Committee and Vice President at Google DeepMind (USA).
The event also counted on Carnegie Mellon University faculty Bhiksha Raj, from the Language Technologies Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, who was already part of LxMLS two previous editions, and participating for the first time, Beidi Chen, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at CMU.
Each afternoon featured hands-on sessions led by the LxMLS team of monitors, offering participants valuable practical experience. In parallel, a challenging panel on Responsible AI, moderated by Helena Moniz – Assistant Professor at the University of Lisbon and CMU Portugal faculty member & researcher – sparked meaningful discussion among attendees.
This year’s speakers also included: KyungHyun Cho, Lucas Dixon, Noah Smith, Sara Hooker, Desmond Elliott, Adèle Ribeiro, Sweta Agrawal, Maxime Peyrard, and Mario Figueiredo.
Beyond the lectures and labs, LxMLS 2025 was full of opportunities for connection, allowing students and speakers to network.
Designed for researchers and graduate students in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Linguistics, the program also attracted computer scientists with an interest in statistics and machine learning, as well as industry practitioners seeking a deeper understanding of these rapidly evolving fields
The event is jointly organized by Instituto Superior Técnico (Técnico), Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (INESC-ID), the Lisbon ELLIS Unit for Learning and Intelligent Systems (LUMLIS), Unbabel and IBM Research. It is further supported by Google and Zendesk, who contribute through scholarships and other initiatives to broaden access to the school.
💻 More about the event at: http://lxmls.it.pt/2025/