Erasmus+ Student Internship – Explainable AI & Software Engineering

The Leuven Engineering and Science Education Center (LESEC) at KU Leuven is looking for a motivated student to join the research team of Professor Tinne De Laet for an Erasmus+ internship. The student internship will contribute to our research on AI-supported and explainable assessment. We are investigating how AI, and in particular Large Language Models (LLMs), can support teachers in assessing open-ended student answers while ensuring that the resulting recommendations are transparent, understandable, and ultimately controlled by the teacher. The internship offers the opportunity to contribute to this research from different perspectives, including software development, AI/LLM integration, experimentation, and system evaluation. **Your contribution may involve:** * Developing and iterating on a web-based prototype for AI-supported assessment, * Integrating LLMs into the assessment workflow, * Designing and implementing back-end functionality and APIs, * Developing front-end components, * Conducting technical experiments to investigate the effectiveness of the system, * Testing and evaluating different approaches to AI-supported assessment, * Analyzing results and contributing to the research process, * Documenting technical and research outcomes, * Contributing to research publications, demonstrations, or other project outputs. A key aspect of the project is the intention to deploy the developed system in a real educational setting and evaluate its use with real users towards the end of the internship. This means that the intern can potentially be involved in the full lifecycle of a research project. The intern will work as part of a larger interdisciplinary team, collaborating with a professor, designer, AI researchers, and instructional psychologists. This provides an opportunity to see how an AI-based educational system is developed not only from a technical perspective, but also from the perspectives of research, pedagogy, user experience, and human-AI interaction. **Who we are looking for:** We primarily welcome applications from students in: Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Data Science, or related fields. We are particularly interested in candidates with: * Good programming skills in Python * Experience with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript * Some experience working with LLMs or generative AI * An interest in AI, educational technology, or human-AI interaction * An interest in applying technical skills to an open-ended research problem * Good English communication skills **Erasmus+ requirements** This position is intended for students undertaking an Erasmus+ traineeship. Applicants must have their own Erasmus+ funding/eligibility through their home university. KU Leuven / LESEC does not provide funding for this position. The internship period and arrangements will be agreed in accordance with the Erasmus+ traineeship requirements of the student's home institution. The preferred start date is January 2027. Application deadline is 23 September. Please apply directly through LinkedIn by submitting your CV. If you have any questions about the internship or the project, feel free to contact Professor Tinne De Laet ([email protected]), Grzegorz Meller ([email protected]), and Tine Keulemans ([email protected]). We look forward to hearing from students who are excited about AI research and exploring how AI can be made useful, transparent, and trustworthy in education.