Hi, I’m Lara.
Software engineer turned researcher

I am currently a Research Associate at the University of Waterloo, working under the supervision of Prof. Mei Nagappan. I am part of the Software Analytics Group Lab (SWAG) and also part of Waterloo Advanced Systems Lab (WASL). My research lives at the intersection of AI and software engineering, specifically how we can use AI agents for automated testing and bug repair, and more importantly, how we build genuine trust in these tools as they enter our codebases. I arrived in research just as LLMs crashed the party. Exciting? Absolutely. Terrifying? Also yes. We now have tools that can write, debug, and test code, but also confidently hallucinate with the energy of someone who definitely did not read the docs. My work is focused on understanding the capabilities and limitations of these tools, and how we can build better ones that are more trustworthy and reliable.