Bootcamp: Focusing on the Current State of Agents

The Kickoff Bootcamp launches IVADO’s Thematic Semester on Autonomous LLM Agents. Designed to equip participants with foundational knowledge and hands-on experience, this four-day event brings together researchers and students to explore the core capabilities, risks, and real-world implications of agentic AI systems.

Each day focuses on a distinct theme:

• Day 1: Software Engineering – Coding Agents
• Day 2: Computer Use – Browsing Agents
• Day 3: Robotics and Embodiment
• Day 4: Multi-Agent Interaction / Human-in-the-Loop Interaction

This event sets the stage for the broader semester by blending state-of-the-art talks, practical tutorials, and interdisciplinary research discussions.

Yoav Artzi (Cornell University, arXiv), Glen Berseth (IVADO, Université de Montréal, MILA), Joyce Chai (University of Michigan), Daniel Fried (Carnegie Mellon University), Natasha Jaques (University of Washington), Alexandre Lacoste (ServiceNow), Ofir Press (Princeton University), Siva Reddy (IVADO, Mila, McGill University), Yu Su (Ohio State University), Alane Suhr (UC Berkeley), Xin Eric Wang (UCSB, Simular), Victor Zhong (University of Waterloo, Vector Institute).

TUESDAY, AUGUST 12^TH, 2025 | SOFTWARE ENGINEERING – CODING AGENTS

8:45 – 9:00 a.m.: Welcome and Check-In
9:00– 9:15 a.m.: Welcome Address
9:15 – 10:45 a.m.: State of the Art – Code Generation With and For Agents
Daniel Fried (Carnegie Mellon University)
10:45 – 11 a.m.: Coffee Break
11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.: Research Talk & Discussion (Remote Presentation) – Towards Autonomous Language Model Systems
Ofir Press (Princeton University)
12:30 – 2:30 p.m.: Lunch Break (on your own)
2:30 – 4:00 p.m.:  Tutorial – Debug-Gym: Training Interactive Debugging Agents
Marc-Alexandre Côté + Alessandro Sordoni (Microsoft Research Montreal)
4:00 – 6:00 p.m.: Networking Get-Together

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13^TH, 2025 | COMPUTER USE – BROWSING AGENTS

9:00 – 9:15 a.m.: Welcome and Check-In
9:15 – 10:45 a.m.: State of the Art – The State of Web Agents
Siva Reddy (IVADO, McGill University, Mila)
10:45 – 11:00 a.m.: Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:30 a.m.: Research Talk 1 – Building and Evaluating Generalist Agents
Victor Zhong (University of Waterloo, Vector Institute)
11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. : Research Talk 2 – Building AI Agents that Use Computers Like a Human
Xin Eric Wang (UCSB)
12:00 – 12:30 p.m.: Discussion
12:30 – 2:30 p.m.: Lunch Break (on your own)
2:30 – 4:30 p.m.:  Tutorial – How to Build and Evaluate Autonomous WebAgents
Alexandre Lacoste (ServiceNow)

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14TH, 2025 | ROBOTICS AND EMBODIMENT

9:00 – 9:15 a.m.: Welcome and Check-In
9:15 – 10:45 a.m.: State of the Art – The State of the Art of Robotics
Liam Paull (IVADO, Université de Montréal, Mila)
10:45 – 11:00 a.m.: Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:30 a.m.: Research Talk 1 – Integrating Language and Embodiment: LLMs in Cognitive Robots
Joyce Chai (University of Michigan)
11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. : Research Talk 2 – Think Graphical, Act Local: Distributed Inference for Robot Perception and Planning
Jana Pavlasek (Polytechnique Montréal)
12:00 – 12:30 p.m.: Discussion
12:30 – 2:30 p.m.: Lunch Break (on your own)
2:30 – 4:30 p.m.:  Tutorial – From Tokens to Actions: How to Build General Robot Policies
Glen Berseth (Université de Montréal)

FRIDAY AUGUST 15TH, 2025 | MULTI-AGENT INTERACTION / HUMAN IN-THE-LOOP INTERACTION

9:00 – 9:15 a.m.: Welcome and Check-In
9:15 – 10:45 a.m.: State of the Art – Challenges of and Approaches to Modeling and Learning in Multi-Agent Interactions
Alane Suhr (UC Berkeley)
10:45 – 11:00 a.m.: Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:30 a.m.: Research Talk 1 – Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) for LLMs
Natasha Jaques (University of Washington)
11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. : Research Talk 2 – Post-Training via Agent Interaction
Yoav Artzi (Cornell University)
12:00 – 12:30 p.m.: Discussion
12:30 – 2:30 p.m.: Lunch Break (on your own)
2:30 – 4:30 p.m.:  Tutorial – On the Emergence of Cooperation in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Quentin Bertrand (Inria)
4:30 – 4.45p.m.: Closing Remarks