1997
Birth
2004 - 2009
Primarschule Meierhof, Baden
2009 - 2013
Bezirksschule Baden
2013
Beginnings of programming
I started by writing some Visual Basic programs and got more into Java while writing several Bukkit server plugins including Block-Labyrinth, Minecraft ShootMania and Survival World.
2013 - 2017
Kantonsschule Baden
My focus subject (Akzentfach) was Natural Sciences and Mathematics and I chose Visual Arts as my special subject (Schwerpunktfach) and Computer Science as my complementary subject (Ergänzungsfach).
2014 - 2017
Custom Game Engine & Minecraft Clones
Over the years, I did lots of experiments with Minecraft-like voxel engines and
developed my own Java game engine based on LWJGL 2
(OpenGL) along the way.
Everything you see below, up until I really started using Unity in around 2017, was made using
this custom engine.
It supports the rendering and manipulation of vertex buffer objects,
provides utilities for loading Wavefront .obj files,
supports the runtime compilation of OpenGL Shading Language .glsl
files
and rendering to a frame buffer
object (virtual texture)
and thereby all sorts of shading techniques and post-processing effects like physically based
rendering, blur and bloom.
As for physics, it supports AABB as well as 2D convex collider collision through an
implementation
of the separating axis
theorem.
Using this engine, I also made some other simple games like Color
Tanks (inspired by Wii Play) or
a TRON-like game, as seen on the
last two slides.
2016
Final Project: Traffic Simulation
This project was done together with Lukas Lötscher as our final project (Maturaarbeit) at
Kantonsschule Baden.
Its purpose was to study traffic throughput on the Schulhausplatz
intersection in Baden before and after a huge reconstruction.
We wanted to find out whether it was going to help with traffic jams and if so, by how much.
After presenting our findings, we found that they coincided very well with official internal
results by Departement Bau, Verkehr und Umwelt des Kantons
Aargau.
The entire simulation was made in Java using only LWJGL
2, my custom engine and our own code.
As one of the best final projects (Maturaarbeiten) in canton Aargau, we received an award for
"Hervorragende Maturaarbeit" and were invited to the Pro Argovia 2017 presentation.
This way, Schweizer Jugend Forscht learned about our work, invited
us to present it and later show it at their exhibition.
Newspaper article in the Aargauer Zeitung
2016
Der Krieg – Nach einem Gedicht von Georg Heym
This short film was originally intended as a small homework project for our German class but
after speaking to the teacher, we decided to step it up.
The story is derived from a poem called Der Krieg by Georg Heym, which
addresses war and the contrast between belligerent enthusiasm and its disillusioning
consequences.
This is the biggest film we have produced yet, with 35 people or more involved and being shown
on the big screen at Kino Orient.
2017 - 2022
ETH Zürich
I enrolled in the Bachelor of Science ETH in Informatik
programme at ETH but only managed to gain 168/180 ECTS due to one failed subject.
My passed subjects include:
- Introduction to Programming
- Algorithms and Data Structures
- Calculus I
- Parallel Programming
- Algorithms and Probability
- Computer Networks
- Data Modelling and Databases
- Calculus II
- Systems Programming and Computer Architecture
- Theoretical Computer Science
- Formal Methods and Functional Programming
- Compiler Design
- Computer Systems
- Introduction to Machine Learning
- Visual Computing
- Information Security
- Human Computer Interaction
- Dependency Structures and Lexicalized Grammars
- Human Factors I
- Energy, Resources, Environment: Risks and Prospects
- Introduction to Negotiation
- Economics of Sustainabile Development
- Bachelor Thesis
2019
Student Project House: Project Gaia
Together with Fabian Hess and
Erik Sulimma, I participated
in the Unbox Your Idea programme at the Student Project House at ETH Zürich.
Our project was about designing and prototyping a frame-like plant pot for growing herbs and
other small plants to be hung up on a wall.
We used a combination of tanks, servo motors, LED lights and other electronics,
all powered by an Arduino UNO,
to periodically automatically water the plants in the three available pots and efficiently
provide them with light.
When presenting our work, we managed to win the Zühlke Award
2019.
2021
Cave Generation Algorithm
This is a Unity prototype of a mine/cave exploration game. Its core is a generation algorithm that not only works on a 2D plane but also in 3D. It uses an SQLite database to store all cave tiles and their attachment points (entries/exits). The algorithm randomly selects a fitting tile from the database that matches the type of attachment point. It also makes sure that no two tiles overlap and that there are no open ends or cut off attachment points, resulting in a variety of interesting cave systems.
2021
Stock Portfolio & Cryptocurrency Price Prediction
The stock/crypto portfolio on the first slide is a web application that uses PHP and an SQL
database for the back-end and the Bulma
framework and Chart.js library for a fancy front-end. For
the back-end price requests, it uses
Yahoo Finance for stock prices and CoinGecko for cryptocurrency prices.
The application is designed in a way that it can calculate holdings, wins and losses based on
just transaction data very effectively without using cached data
so it is able to reconstruct states at any point in time.
As for the cryptocurrency price prediction, I trained a Tensorflow neural network on a large dataset of daily
Bitcoin prices
over 10 years. I pre-processed this data by adding another data point: BUY,
HOLD or SELL, depending on the relative price difference
to one week later. This alone gave me a model prediction accuracy of around 55 to 60 percent. I
then did a sentiment analysis of
Elon Musk's tweets and added the scores as extra data
points for even better accuracy.
2021
Pattern Recognition Prototype
As with the price prediction above, the
Introduction to Machine Learning
course at ETH Zürich inspired me to use what I learned in a real application, just in the
form of a game. The idea was to build a
tower-defense-like game but with a
twist: Unlike most tower defense games,
the player can't only build turrets and watch them fight off the attackers but it is
possible to manually cast spells to help the turrets with large waves of enemies.
The way this (rather crude) Unity prototype is done is by rendering the drawn shape or
pattern to a low-resolution virtual texture,
applying some tricks to deal with the low touchscreen sample rate, and feeding this into a
Tensorflow neural network
that I previously trained on images produced using this exact method.
2022
Bachelor Thesis: Measuring Tracking Performance of Augmented Reality Algorithms
As my Bachelor thesis at ETH Zürich, I helped my supervisors Henry Raymond and Börge Scheel develop Behind the Art, an augmented reality application for the Liechtenstein Princely Collections. I developed a method to measure, analyse and compare commercially available augmented reality algorithms on factors such as tracking accuracy, precision, performance and stability. Finally, I demonstrated the validity of the system using the popular AR frameworks Vuforia and AR Foundation. The work was awarded the highest grade without graduation.
2022
Legionärspfad Vindonissa
For the first month of my civil service, I worked for Museum Aargau at the Legionärspfad Vindonissa in Windisch as technical support. My task was to take care of the exhibition's points of interest and keep the technical equipment running.
2022 - 2023
MeteoSwiss
For the following five months of my civil service, I worked for MeteoSwiss at Zürich Airport on the numerical weather prediction. Specifically, I helped with the transition from the old COSMO forecasting system to the new ICON system. This involved revising and converting previous procedures alongside the integration of completely new functionality. Following my civil service, I was invited to work as an intern for another three and a half months, for a total of eight and a half months.
Please contact me for letters of recommendation.
2022 - Today
Virtual Production
In the summer of 2022, I got together with my friends Colin Schmid and Timon Oberholzer to explore the possibilities of virtual production. Over the months, our team grew to include Elia Meierhofer, Hermann Eichhorn and Benjamin Brunner, and under the name of Aetherlab, we developed a workflow that allows us to extremely efficiently plan, shoot and post-process scenes with real or virtual subjects in photorealistic environments, completely in real-time. My main tasks were to supervise the technical aspects of the project, including the environment creation during pre-production, the operation of the tracking system and Unreal Engine during production, as well as the rendering pipeline and visual effects in post-production.
After some test shoots, we finally worked on a trailer-like short film called Die Legende vom Wolf des Südens that showcases the possibilities of virtual production and the workflow we developed. It was released on the 27th of July, 2023.
Website of our studio Aetherlab
Die Legende vom Wolf des Südens on YouTube
2023 - 2024
ZHAW
Since I was only able to gain 168/180 ECTS at ETH Zürich due to one failed subject, I completed
my Bachelor degree in Computer Science at the Zürcher
Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften and graduated with a Bachelor of Science ZHAW in Informatik.
My passed subjects include:
- Artificial Intelligence 1
- Bionics
- Digital Health
- Energiewirtschaft und Versorgungssicherheit
- Information Engineering 1
- Serverless and Cloud Application Development
- Visual Computing 1
- Project Thesis: Computer Science
- Advanced Software Engineering 2
- Artificial Intelligence 2
- Multicore and Parallel Computing
- Visual Computing 2
- Zukunft Rohstoffe
- Bachelor Thesis: Computer Science
2024
Bachelor Thesis: XCrowd: Real-Time Dynamic Crowd Movement Simulation on Graph Networks
After working with my supervisor Dr. Andreas Weiler on a crowd simulation software as my 5th semester project at the ZHAW Zürich University of Applied Sciences, I was asked to continue the work in my Bachelor Thesis. The purpose of the software is to connect theoretical crowd movement optimisation and real-world operations. I presented a vision paper at the Big Mobility Data Analytics conference at Paestum, Italy and the final research paper was published at the RWTH Aachen University. The work was presented in the Engineers 2024 magazine and awarded the highest grade.
2024
Stadtforstamt Baden
For the last six months of my civil service, namely the Long Service, I am working for the Stadtforstamt Baden. We are responsible for a wide range of tasks, such as dry and wet location maintenance, neophyte control and other nature conservation activities, as well as timber production.