Teaching & theses

In the spring term 2026, we are teaching:

• Mobile Health and Activity Monitoring 2026 master course
• Adaptive User Interfaces through Machine Learning 2026 bachelor seminar
• Egocentric Computer Vision: Perception and Understanding from the First-Person View 2026 master seminar
• Reinforcement Learning for Understanding and Modeling Human Behavior 2026 master seminar

Available student thesis projects

5 projects are available (via 4 master’s theses, 3 semester theses, and 2 bachelor’s theses). The list below is up-to-date.

Please submit your CV and transcripts through SiROP. In case of questions, please contact us via SiROP.

• PulseBench: Benchmarking Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability Estimation from PPG Signals

  We will develop a reproducible benchmarking framework for estimating heart rate and heart-rate variability from photoplethysmography signals. The project will evaluate deep learning methods including self-supervised methods across diverse datasets, focusing on accuracy, robustness, and practical deployment constraints. The project combines biomedical signal processing, wearable sensing, deep learning learning, benchmarking, and real-world health-monitoring applications.

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  • contact: Berken Demirel
  • semester thesis
  • bachelor's thesis
  • master's thesis

  • benchmarking
  • reproducibility
  • heart rate and heart rate variability estimation.

• Geometry-Aware Surface Routing for 3D Object Meshes

  Building on our SIGGRAPH 2026 paper, this project will develop a new geometry-processing method for routing surface-based sensor layouts directly on 3D object meshes. The project will focus on a constructive routing algorithm that generates two compatible families of surface curves and address the geometric challenge of producing well-distributed, surface-conforming curve networks that satisfy routing, intersection, and topology constraints on arbitrary meshes.

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  • contact: Christian Holz
  • master's thesis

  • Geometry processing
  • surface meshes
  • geodesic curves
  • intrinsic routing
  • curve networks
  • vector fields
  • computational fabrication
  • surface parameterization

• Tactile Representations in Robotics via Self-Supervised and Optimal-Transport-Based Learning

  We will develop and validate a self-supervised learning pipeline for tactile representation learning across different tactile datasets and sensor types. Using existing public tactile datasets, we will train tactile encoders on images and align the learned feature spaces using Optimal Transport. The goal is to evaluate whether optimal transport can improve cross-dataset and cross-sensor transfer without requiring exact paired tactile samples.

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  • contact: Berken Demirel
  • master's thesis

  • self-supervised learning
  • optimal transport
  • representation learning
  • tactile

• Wearable Data Pipeline for Cardiac Health Monitoring

  The goal of this student project is to design and implement a fully automated data ingestion and processing pipeline for health data collected 24/7 via a Polar Watch from patients.
  The study with data collection will last a year to study the cardiac activity of people under different daily life activities.

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  • contact: Elsie Nix, Berken Demirel
  • semester thesis
  • bachelor's thesis

  • cardiac disease
  • digital health
  • wearables

• + 1 internal project (must be inside ETHZ network)

  

Current thesis students

• Qichen Zhao master's UZH, Computer Science
• Tim Goppelsroeder master's ETH Data Science, D-INFK
• Nicolas Baeriswyl master's ETH Computer Science, D-INFK
• Qi Ma master's ETH Computer Science, D-INFK
• William Jabbour master's ETH Data Science, D-INFK
• Monica De Alvaro Mena semester ETH Data Science, D-INFK
• Damian Herculano semester ETH Computer Science, D-INFK
• Yannic Hostettler semester ETH Robotics, D-MAVT, RSC
• Fei Gao semester UZH Computer Science

Past Courses and Seminars

• Human-Computer Interaction bachelor course
  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
• Mixed Reality master course
  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2023
• Mobile Health and Activity Monitoring master course
  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
• Ubiquitous Computing master course
  • 2021
  • 2020
• Adaptive User Interfaces through Machine Learning bachelor seminar
  • 2025
• Egocentric Perception for Human-World Understanding master seminar
  • 2025
• Reinforcement Learning for Understanding and Modeling Human Behavior master seminar
  • 2025
• Advanced Topics in Mixed Reality bachelor seminar
  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
• Advanced Topics in Technical Human-Computer Interaction bachelor seminar
  • 2021
  • 2020