Seminar CS715: Solving Complex Tasks using Large Language Models (FSS 2026)

The focus of this semester's seminar are LLM agents as well as retrieval augmented generation (RAG). The seminar focuses mainly on experimental topics and a small selection of literature topics. The goal of the experimental topics is to verify the utility of specific approaches by applying them to tasks beyond the tasks used in the respective papers for illustration and evaluation. The goal of the literature topics is to summarize the state-of-the-art concerning a specific aspect of the application of LLMs or LLM-based agents and to compare specific approaches in this area using a systematic set of criteria.

• This seminar is organized by Prof. Dr. Christian Bizer, Dr. Ralph Peeters, Aaron Steiner.
• The seminar is available for master and bachelor students of the Data Science, Social Data Science, and Business Informatics programs.

In this seminar, you will

• read, understand, and explore scientific literature
• critically summarize the state-of-the-art concerning your topic
• for experimental topics, experimentally verify the utility of prompt engineering or  agent-based methods
• give a presentation about your topic (before the submission of the report)

1. Please register for the seminar via the centrally-coordinated seminar registration in Portal2.
2. After you have been accepted into the seminar, please email your three preferred topics from the list below to Aaron. We will assign topics to students according to your preferences.
3. Attend the kickoff meeting on February 24th. In the kickoff meeting we will discuss general requirements for the reports and presentations as well as answer initial questions about the topics.
4. You will be assigned a mentor, who provides guidance and one-to-one meetings over the course of the seminar.
5. Work individually throughout the semester: explore literature, perform experiments (if you are assigned an experimental topic, also please note: we cannot reimburse you for any LLM API costs incurred), create a presentation, and write a report.
6. Give your presentation in a block seminar on May 4th, 2026.
7. Write and submit your seminar thesis until July 3rd, 2026.

The following survey articles and tutorial are good starting points for getting an overview of the topics of the seminar:

• Wang, et al: A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents. arXiv:2308.11432, 2024
• Sager et al.: AI Agents for Computer Use: A Review of Instruction-based Computer Control, GUI Automation, and Operator Assistants. arXiv:2501.16150, 2025
• Zhao, et al.: A survey of Large Language Models. arXiv:2303.18223, 2024