Excellent student theses advised by me

2026

Monte Carlo Tree Search for the Vienna Game AI Library (Bleon Jupa)

In his Bachelor's thesis, Mr Jupa implemented Monte Carlo Tree Search for the Vienna Game AI Library (VGAI).

Real-Time destruction models using the Vienna Physics Engine (Andy Liu)

In his Bachelor's thesis, Mr Liu created a building destruction model for the Vienna Physics Engine (VPE).

See a video here: https://youtu.be/S6FQq5M6HZk

A GUI for an Entity Component System (Marlene Lucia Kasper)

In her Bachelor's thesis, Mrs Kasper created a GUI for the Vienna Entity Component System (VECS).

AI driven development of game engines (Malak Mohsen)

In her Bachelor's thesis, Mrs Mohsen creates a fully functioning game engine with vibe coding and Google Gemini 3.0 Pro.

GhostInvaders: https://youtu.be/NNqFDTjmRg4

Pac-Witch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOyDt2Pke04

Trial bike physical simulation using the Vienna Physics Engine (Stasa Tadic)

In her Bachelor's thesis, Mrs Tadic developed a physics simulation of a trial bike using the Vienna Physics Engine.

You can see a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqJTPOSc_cM

Vehicle Dynamics Simulation of a Monster Truck using the Vienna Physics Engine (Adam Radics)

In his Bachelor's thesis, Mr Radics implemented the physical simuation of driving dynamics of a monster truck using the Vienna Physics Engine.

You can see a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhdvQwfy-1Q

Real-time Image-based Lighting with Irradiance Cubemaps from 3D Gaussian Splatting (Philipp Orozco-Carazo)

In his Bachelor's thesis, Mr Orozco-Carazo implemented Gaussian Splatting into the Vienna Vulkan Engine and researched whether it is feasible to use it to light objects in real time.

One Trillion Trees (Max Zimmermann)

In his Bachelor's thesis, Mr Zimmermann developed a climate simulation, showing us when tipping points will occur, and the how planting Billions of trees can move these tipping points and give us more time to develope solutions.

You can see a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssYPr_N2TXQ

You can run the simulation here: https://goblin464.github.io/1-Trillion-Trees/

Assessing Story Coherence of Long Narratives using LLMs (Enno Stubler)

In his Master's thesis, Mr Enno Stubler examines how to assess the coherence of automatically created stories using again LLMs.

Creating Game Design documents with LLMs (Jonathan Wurth)

In his Bachelor's thesis, Mr Jonathan Wurth examines how to create game design documents with LLMs.

Motivation in Learning Games (Jakob Martin)

In his Bachelor's thesis, Mr Jakob Martin examines the efficacy of three different learning motivators for learning games: gamification rewards, an authority figure, and an epic cause.

2025

Safe Messenger based on Email (Nikola Radovanovic)

In his Bachelor's thesis, Mr Radovanovic developed a messenger similar to WhatsApp or Slack based on the normal Email protocol, compatible with standard email clients. The main idea is to provide a safe message channel for businesses that prevent phishing attacks.

See also this video.

Scrap Book App (Vasilije Mirkovic, Stefan Brezancic)

In their Bachelor's theses, Mr. Brezancıc and Mr. Mirkovic implemented a scrap book app enabling chronic (cancer) patients being home and suffering from long lasting ailments to document their patient journey and gain strength and motivation for treatment compliance by experiencing their progress through the app.

Evaluation of the Feasibility of Implementing Vulkan Video Extensions on CPUs (Bernhard Clemens Schrenk)

In this thesis, Mr. Schrenk implements the Vulkan Video API to be part of Mesa 3D running on CPU ony, no GPU involved. This can be an important fallback option for hardware restricted systems without GPU support, e.g., running medical applications, servers streaming display output, etc.

AI-Driven Game Development with Gemini 2.5 Pro - Can Prompting Alone Lead to a Fully Playable Game? (Elena Popp)

In her thesis, Mrs. Popp creates a full video game using 585 prompts in Google Gemini 2.5 pro. Download the Windows version from https://entertain.univie.ac.at/~hlavacs/theses/BuildYourBrickHouse_Setup_1.0.0.exe.

Enhancing Programming Learnability for Children Through Video Games (Nora Volina)

In this thesis, Mrs. Volina designs an innovative computer game to teach children coding in a popular game engine.

Comparative Analysis of Procedural Planet Generators (Manuel Zechmann)

In this thesis, Mr. Zechmann implemented and compared various ways to procedurally create planets in computer graphics.

Data Usage, Visualization and Predictions in Esports (Aleksandar Stojkov)

In this thesis, Mr. Stojkov implemented and evaluated a web page that documents e-sports teams and their scores, and makes predictions of future wins.

Vienna Game AI Library (Lavinia-Elena Lehaci)

In her thesis, Mrs. Lehaci implemented and evaluated the first version of the Vienna Game AI library (VGAI), found here: https://github.com/hlavacs/ViennaGameAILibrary.

Solar System Game In Education (Dongzhou Fang)

In his thesis, Mr. Dongzhou Fang implemented a space shooter game that also teaches basics about our solar system.

WastelessWizard.IO - An application promoting the reduction of consumption of household waste (Jovana Krtolica)

In her thesis, Mrs. Krtolica designed, implemented and evaluated an app enabling households to effectively reduce waste.

2024

A Stealth Serious Game About Hiring Bias (Paul Friedrich Pesak)

In his thesis, Mr. Pesak implemented and evaluated a stealthy game where players hire possible workers based on skills and photographs. The game statistically evaluates if there is a race or gender based bias in the hiring decisions.

Practice Room Music Practice App (Hanna Flatz, Soleil Froehlich, Erika Spring, Lucas Enzi)

In this interdisciplinary cooperation between the University of Vienna and the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna, four students collaborated in their theses to design and implement an innovative app for advanced music students to manage their own practice time. Download from https://lucasenzi.github.io/practice-room-landing-page/

Comparing the Enjoyment of Video Game Mechanics (Alexander Ramharter)

In his thesis, Mr. Ramharter implemented and compared the player enjoyment of different shooter game mechanics.

De-lighting color textures of 3D models (Thomas Christian Birke)

In his thesis, Mr. Birke automatically creates behavior trees used in game AI from large numbers of game observations.

Esports Trainer (David Coemert)

In his thesis, Mr. Coemert uses Machine Learning to act as a trainer for e-sports gamer.

2023

Shaping AI Behavior: A Q-Learning Driven Approach to Automatic Behavior Tree Creation (Ralph Dworzanski)

In his thesis, Mr. Dworzanski automatically creates behavior trees used in game AI from large numbers of game observations.

Towards an AI-based decision support tool for air traffic control (Oliver Schweiger)

In his thesis, Mr. Schweiger uses Machine Learning to predict the future air traffic density influenced by the predicted weather of the next hours.

A study on the correlation between gamification and motivation in a serious context with a cross-platform job-market application (Niklas Grossmann)

In his thesis, Mr. Grossmann implemented an innovative gamified job-application app allowing easy application based on quizes, and compared the effectiveness of different levels of gamification on use motivation.