I’m passionate about formal reasoning, verification tools, and programming languages. I hold a Master’s in Informatics Engineering from the University of Minho, where I explored the link between formal specifications and executable code. I also spent a semester at LMU Munich through Erasmus+, focusing on formal methods and model checking.
I am an incoming LTI PhD student at CMU and Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), with a background in Physics and Deep Learning. My research interests lie primarily in GPU optimization and efficient NLP.
Rui Melo is a PhD student at FEUP, Portugal, researching the intersection of Machine Learning and Software Engineering. He holds an MSc from IST and previously worked as an AI Engineer at a U.S. legal-tech startup. His research focuses on enhancing code generation through adversarial ML and mechanistic interpretability.
I am interested in programming languages as tools for effective communication with computers. In my PhD I want to explore the design of type systems for programming languages that are expressive and efficient by using substructural logics to capture parts of program behaviour such as resource management or evaluation order.
A policy and strategic management passionate with academic & professional expertise rooted in strategic planning, requirements engineering, designing & integration of user-oriented Product & service systems (PSS) as well as their life-cycle management. Keen on exploring Social Policy Entrepreneurship initiatives with an aim to deliver sustainable and circular solutions that may be well received by all of the societies’ stakeholders, including consumers, producers, and policy makers. Avid about employing my technical liaison and strategic management skills to complement the technological knowledge towards achieving optimum progression of projects, policy design/analysis, and subsequent life cycles of such solutions.
Maria received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Universidad Simón BolÃvar (USB) in 2022. After graduation, she continued collaborating with Dr. Carlos Mastalli (Heriot-Watt University) on the optimal control robotics library Crocoddyl. In 2024, she began working as a Research Assistant in the LeDuc Lab at CMU.
Lara Sá Neves is a Biomedical and Data Science Engineer passionate about transparent, adaptive AI. She’s an incoming CS PhD student, and her goals are to advance trustworthy machine learning and build impactful healthcare solutions through research and innovation.
Master’s in Computer Science with specializations in Cybersecurity and Distributed Systems from Instituto Superior Técnico (University of Lisbon). Now pursuing a dual-degree Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at CMU and IST, focusing on program analysis and software security.
João Cortes is currently pursuing his Ph.D in Engineering and Public Policy.. Cortes has worked for 5 years in Data Science and AI Engineering for the European Central Bank, Deloitte Technology and the Portuguese Foreign Trade and Investment Agency. He has also worked as a Researcher at the Institute of Public Policy – Lisbon; at Nova SBE’s Economics For Policy Knowledge Centre and at the Office for Strategy and Studies of the Portuguese Ministry of Economics. In his part time, Cortes has also been invited to lecture on Econometrics for Financial Markets at ISCTE. João holds a Master’s Degree in Economics with a Major in Data Science from Nova School of Business and Economics, where he was part of the Nova SBE Fellowship for Excellence program.
