2026 – Present
Software engineering
Experience
Software engineering experience, publications, posters, and events around developer tools, software verification, and AI.
Experience
2025 – 2026
Software Engineering Researcher
- Project: Improving the usability of LiquidJava , a liquid type system for Java, through enhanced verification feedback, extended IDE support, and a better overall developer experience.
- Verification Feedback: Redesigned diagnostics and implemented traceable predicate simplification, counterexamples, and actionable hints to make verification failures easier to understand and resolve.
- IDE Integration: Enhanced the VS Code extension with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, hover information, and interactive views for exploring diagnostics, inspecting the verification context, and visualizing typestate protocols.
- Verifier Improvements: Improved verification robustness and predictability through multiple error reporting, complete project verification, and closer alignment with Java syntax and semantics.
- Contributions: 120+ merged pull requests to the verifier and 80+ to its VS Code extension.
- Supervisors: Alcides Fonseca and Catarina Gamboa
- Funding: FCT | LASIGE
Publications
Posters
- Improving the Usability of LiquidJava Ricardo Costa, Catarina Gamboa, Alcides Fonseca
- Barista: Synthesizing Typestate Specifications with LLM Agents Catarina Gamboa, Paulo Canelas, Ricardo Costa, Márcio Caetano, Jonathan Aldrich, Alcides Fonseca · Best PhD Student Poster Award
Events
- Poster Presenter CIÊNCIAS Research & Innovation Day 2026 · Improving the Usability of LiquidJava · Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
- Speaker JNation 2026 · LiquidJava: Catch Bugs at Compile Time with Liquid Types · Convento São Francisco, Coimbra, Portugal
- Poster Presenter 11th LASIGE Workshop · Improving the Usability of LiquidJava · Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
- Volunteer Lisbon AI 2026 · Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal