Artificial Intelligence for Digital Characters (Spring, 2024–present)
Seminar on Digital Humans (Fall, 2022–present)
Senior Researcher
Computer Graphics Laboratory, ETH Zurich
Leading the Digital Character AI research team. Developing models that combine large language models, affective computing, and data-driven animation to create embodied conversational agents with autonomous agency, consistent values, and beliefs.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Computer Graphics Laboratory, ETH Zurich
Researcher / PhD Student
Computer Graphics Laboratory, ETH Zurich
Education
Dr. sc. (PhD) in Computer Science
ETH Zurich
Thesis: Multimodal Affective State Prediction in Mobile Settings.
Supervised by Prof. Dr. Markus Gross.
Master's Degree in Computer Science
ETH Zurich
Thesis: Engagement Detector: Modelling Engagement Dynamics in Virtual Environments.
Supervisors: Severin Klingler, Dr. Tanja Käser, Dr. Barbara Solenthaler, Prof. Dr. Markus Gross.
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
ETH Zurich
Thesis: Diff library in Eiffel (Diffeif).
Supervisors: Yu Pei, Prof. Dr. Bertrand Meyer.
Awards
Best Paper Honorable Mention
18th ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion, Interaction, and Games (MIG), Zurich ∙
December 2025
For the paper PhonemeNet: A Transformer Pipeline for Text-Driven Facial Animation.
Best Paper Honorable Mention
25th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), Berlin ∙
September 2025
For the paper BEE: Belief-Value-Aligned, Explainable, and Extensible Cognitive Framework for Conversational Agents.