A Week of Machine Learning (and Croatian Sunsets) at M2L 2025
Last week I attended the Mediterranean Machine Learning Summer School (M2L) 2025 in Split, Croatia. Five days of lectures, labs, posters, and conversations with 300+ participants from 56 countries. Here’s what it was like.
Getting There
I knew this week would be special when I met another attendee on my flight to Split. A PhD researcher from Switzerland - we started talking at the airport and realized we were both heading to M2L. Because we checked in one after another, we ended up as neighbours in the student dorm too. Since he was a passionate CrossFitter, later in the week he convinced me to join him for a session. We also did a walking tour of the old city together.
The venue was FESB, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of Split. The building itself was nothing fancy, but since the campus was on an elevated spot in Split, we had sea views from the terrace.
The Summer School: Talks in the Morning, Labs in the Afternoon
M2L ran from September 8 to 12, and each day had a clear theme.
Day 1 was about fundamentals: deep learning, transformers, mixture of experts, and vision-language models. There was also a CV clinic (yes, the career kind, not computer vision) and hands-on LLM labs.
Day 2 LLMs: AI safety, reasoning, watermarking. The poster session started, and there were labs on vision models and a talk on LLMs for robotics.
Day 3 covered reinforcement learning for LLMs, something called “context to capabilities,” and a session on AI safety and ethics in practice.
Day 4 was my favorite on paper: agentic LLMs, graph neural networks, and multi-agent learning. There were GNN labs and a panel on startups and VCs.
Day 5 wrapped things up with AlphaFold and bio-LLMs, diffusion models, and world models. The diffusion labs were packed. There was an AMA session and the best poster awards.
The format worked well. Morning lectures set the context, afternoon labs made you actually do the thing.
The Poster Sessions (And What I Learned About Sharing)
Poster sessions were everywhere, and they became one of my favorite parts of the event. Not for the posters themselves, but for the conversations that happened around them. You’d walk up to someone’s poster, ask a question, and suddenly you’re 20 minutes into a discussion about their approach to some niche problem you didn’t even know existed.
Here’s my regret: I didn’t present a poster.
I had work I could have shown - intermediate results from my Master’s thesis - but I didn’t think it was “ready.” I thought I needed something more polished, more complete. Then I walked around the poster hall and saw plenty of people presenting work-in-progress. They were getting feedback, bouncing ideas off strangers, making connections. Some of the best conversations I overheard started with “I’m not sure this is right, but…”
Lesson learned: share earlier, while the ideas are still forming. You don’t need a finished paper. You need something worth talking about.
The Community
M2L had 300+ participants from 63 nationalities. That sounds like a statistic, but you feel it in the coffee breaks. At any given table you’d hear three languages, someone explaining their PhD topic, someone else asking where to get good coffee in Split.
Beyond all the AI and technical talks, the highlight was the people. The energy and curiosity in every conversation made the week more valuable than any single lecture could.
On the last day, I even made two new friends. I needed to share a taxi to the airport and found someone in the group chat heading the same way. He turned out to be from Indonesia, now doing a PhD in Edinburgh. We talked the whole ride - about research, about travel, about hidden spots in Indonesia I should visit someday. Some of the best connections happen when you’re not trying.
Earlier that day, since I stayed until Sunday and many people had already left, I went on a solo hike up Marjan Hill next to Split. Afterwards, I found a beach on the side of the hill. There I ran into another guy who was also alone on the last day - someone I had briefly chatted with a few days earlier. We ended up spending the last couple of hours on the beach together.
Split Itself
The city was beautiful. We’d finish sessions around 6pm and walk through the old town, past Diocletian’s Palace, finding places to eat. One evening a group of us wandered around looking for the famous street cat “Tom”, a chill cat who hangs around the old town like he owns the place. We found him lounging on some stone steps, completely unbothered by tourists. We took pictures. He ignored us. We got dinner.
The social dinners were a highlight - good food, wine, conversations that drifted from transformers to travel recommendations. Having ancient Roman ruins as your evening scenery doesn’t hurt either.
During the week we also discovered a cafe called Joe and the Sisters. They had one of the best desserts I’ve ever eaten: a pistachio tiramisu. Honestly, it might be the best dessert I’ve ever had. They also had good matcha and coffee.
What I’m Taking Away
A few things I’m doing now that the week is over:
Watching the recordings. M2L posted all the talks online. I missed a few sessions and want to revisit others. The playlist is already in my bookmarks.
Being less precious about sharing work. Next conference or summer school, I’m submitting a poster. Even if it’s just intermediate results.
Following up with people. I collected a few LinkedIn connections, but more importantly, I had real conversations worth continuing. The PhD researcher from Switzerland, the guy from Indonesia - these are people I want to stay in touch with.
Digging deeper into LLM safety. One of the talks sparked an idea I want to explore further. Maybe in the future I’ll write about it here.
Would I Recommend It?
Yes. If you’re a Master’s student or early PhD interested in machine learning, M2L is worth your time. The lectures are solid, the labs are practical, and the people are the real value.
M2L 2025 ran from September 8-12 in Split, Croatia. All talk recordings are available online.