Hi, I'm Benjamin

… and I'm a software engineer from the Zurich area in Switzerland. I love to experiment with technology and to bring new ideas to life. My passions include photography and film, just as much as game design, computer graphics, web engineering, and data science. On this website, I present some of my work in the aforementioned fields and share the newest developments in my life down in the blog section.

Photo

Landscape

City

Macro

Film

Feuerregen | 2014

Info

Feuerregen is a short movie I made in 2014. It portrays a young man who gets lost in his fantasies. When his best friend rejects his advances, he draws dangerous conclusions about her uncle.

The short is available in German only.

Trabant B12 | 2013

Info

Through the footage of surveillance cameras, we follow the lives of two young men inhabiting a colony on the moon "B12". They were conceived by artificial insemination and grew up closely monitored by an AI they call "mother".

After one of the men discovers strangely glowing creatures floating in the air, he begins to develop a fascination for the moon and its inhabitants. Soon afterward his desire for freedom grows stronger and stronger ...

B12 Episodes | 2012

Schneckentempo | 2010

Info

Schneckentempo ("snail pace") is a short movie I made as a school project in 2010. It portrays a passionate biker who is diagnosed with an incurable disease. The title "Schneckentempo" refers to the slow progression of the protagonist's illness on the one hand and him having to slow down as a biker on the other hand.

The short is available in German only.

Games

Campus Explorer | 2018

Info

In the context of my master's thesis at ETH Zurich, I implemented Campus Explorer. Campus Explorer is a prototype game that allows evaluating a set of suitable core game mechanics, social features and reward systems to motivate students to explore their university and meet other students.

Based on my thesis, I wrote a paper that got accepted at the IADIS Game and Entertainment Technologies conference 2018.

Download the thesis: click here

Download the paper: click here

A Drone in the Dark | 2016

Info

A Drone in the Dark is our contribution to the Game Programming Laboratory at ETH Zurich in 2016 and is the winner of the audience award sponsored by Microsoft.

More information, reports and the game itself can be found on the ETH website.

Click here for a screenshot of the post on the Microsoft Developer Facebook page (the original post is not online anymore).

Basic Renderer | 2015

Info

The Basic Renderer (bRenderer) is a cross-platform educational framework written in C++ and suited to teach basic knowledge in computer graphics.

My paper "bRenderer: A Flexible Basis for a Modern Computer Graphics Curriculum" was accepted at Eurographics 2017 as part of the Education Program.

3D History Museum | 2011

Info

In the context of a school project, I created an interactive 3D history museum using the Unity engine. It consists of four rooms with each being dedicated to a historic event of the 20th century.

Visitors can test their newly gained knowledge in a quiz in the main hall of the museum.

Blog

Kubernetes Certification (CKAD)

September 2021

After a few years of working with Kubernetes on the job, I have finally decided to get certified. I am now a "Certified Kubernetes Application Developer" and I'm looking forward to many more years of easily deploying and maintaining my software using Kubernetes.

Tangible AR at TEI 21

February 2021

Our paper "Real-Time Capture of Holistic Tangible Interactions" by Virag Varga et al. was published in the "Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction".

iSAQB: Software Architecture Certification

May 2020

Today, I received the certification "Certified Professional for Software Architecture" from iSAQB.

Landscape Photography in Lötschental

October 2019

Every year in fall, I visit relatives in the beautiful mountain valley of Lötschental in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. In the context of this year's redesign of my website, I added some of the most stunning impressions of the valley and its surrounding mountains to the landscape section of my photo gallery.

Google Cloud: Certified Data Engineer

June 2019

In the past few months, I had the opportunity to deepen my knowledge about data engineering and to gain proficiency with products and workflows to process data in the Google Cloud. Today, I'm happy to announce that I received the certification "Google Cloud Platform Certified: Professional Data Engineer" as a reward for my efforts.

IT Consultant at ipt

October 2018 to present

In October 2018, I joined Innovation Process Technology AG as a consultant. At my first customer, a large Swiss financial institute, I already took full responsibility for the automation of the digital customer onboarding process.

In my second mandate, I was part of a team operating the Red Hat Single Sign-On platform. The platform was vital for the customer as both employees and ticket machines relied on it.

More recently, I have joined a large Swiss health insurer to establish a new distributed integration platform based on Red Hat Fuse, Apache Camel, and OpenShift.

Tangible AR at ETH and Disney Research

June to October 2018

After finishing my master's thesis, I had the opportunity to stay at the ETH Game Technology Center for another exciting project. In collaboration with Disney Research, I was part of the development of a paper about enhancing augmented reality (AR) experiences using body channel communication. My responsibility was the development of AR applications demonstrating the capabilities of the technology being developed at Disney Research. I implemented the applications using Unity and Vuforia running on both Android and Microsoft HoloLens.

Master of Science UZH in Informatics

18.07.2018

Today, I graduated summa cum laude from the University of Zurich with an MSc in Informatics (computer science). During my time at the university, I focused on computer graphics and web technologies as well as on cloud computing and data science. To further deepen my knowledge in these areas, I visited classes at ETH Zurich, where I also wrote my master's thesis "Campus Explorer: Facilitating Student Communities through Gaming".

Campus Explorer at MCCSIS 2018

20.07.2018

After completing my master's thesis on facilitating student communities through gaming, I had the opportunity to write a paper about the topic. My paper titled "Campus Explorer: Facilitating Student Communities through Gaming" was accepted at this year's IADIS Game and Entertainment Technologies conference. It is available in the IADIS digital library.

bRenderer at Eurographics 2017

21.03.2017

My paper "bRenderer: A Flexible Basis for a Modern Computer Graphics Curriculum" was presented at Eurographics 2017 as part of the Education Program.

Second Place at the ETH Rendering Competition

23.12.2016

In the context of the computer graphics lecture at ETH Zurich, I implemented a path tracer (based on the Nori framework). To demonstrate the features we implemented during the semester, a contest was held among the about 50 students taking the lecture. This year's theme was "Once Upon a Time" and my render, showing a hand-modeled ruin in front of a forest, was ranked second.

Click here to the contest page at ETH.

Audience Award for A Drone in the Dark

31.05.2016

Our game "A Drone in the Dark" won this year's audience award at the ETH Game Lab. The prize was sponsored by Microsoft and consist of an Xbox One including four controllers. Many thanks!

Click here for a screenshot of the post on the Microsoft Developer Facebook page (the original post is not online anymore).

Feuerregen

30.04.2014

I just released my newest short movie "Feuerregen" about a young man who gets lost in his fantasies.

Trabant B12 nominated!

30.04.2014

My short movie "Trabant B12" was nominated at the Academy Shorts short film festival this year. I'm looking forward to seeing it on the big screen!

Trabant B12: Short Movie

12.12.2013

After five teaser episodes, my short movie "Trabant B12" is finally available on YouTube.

Schneckentempo nominated!

02.05.2013

My short "Schneckentempo" will be presented at this year's Academy Shorts in Fribourg.

Trabant B12: Last Episode

12.12.2012

An essay about life on a faraway planet.

B12 at the Camgaroo Award 2012

12.10.2012

The first episode "Prologue" was nominated for the Camgaroo Award 2012!

Additionally, the episode got nominated for the AFF-Award 2012 by the "Amateurfilm Forum" community.

Trabant B12: Teaser Episodes

29.09.2012

The first four episodes of Trabant B12 are now online.

B12 Browser Game

18.08.2012

In the B12 browser game, you can take control of the space ship Mayflower and try to reach the moon B12. But pay attention to the schedule and your fuel reserves!

Update: Unfortunately, the Unity Web Player does not work anymore in modern browsers.

Trabant B12: First Episode

12.08.2012

The first teaser episode is now online!

The human race is soon to be extinct and the only way to preserve our heritage is to discover new planets. Yet it is still impossible to travel at light speed and no living being could ever arrive at the only place suitable for humans to survive and within reach for a spacecraft.

Therefore, scientists send the human genome on its long journey to a small moon called “B12”, where people are born and raised by machines. Yet life on B12 is not what they expected it to be ...

3D History Museum

10.04.2011

For my history class, I created a small history museum about the most important events of the 20th century. This way, students can explore history in a gaming context making it more fun and interesting at the same time.

Schneckentempo

12.11.2010

In the context of my final project for school, I just finished "Schneckentempo". It is a short film about a biker who is diagnosed with a fatal illness.