ETH Zürich · Electrical engineering

Manuel Ugolini

I study electrical engineering at ETH Zürich, run operations at ETHSG — where ETH students meet HSG students and industry — and build software that makes everyday routines smoother.

Studying
BSc EEIT, ETH Zürich
Leading
Head of Operations, ETHSG
Teaching
Part-time course instructor

About

I'm doing my bachelor's in electrical engineering and information technology at ETH Zürich, after starting out in computational science and engineering. The switch brought me closer to the hardware side of things without leaving the code behind.

Alongside my studies I help run ETHSG and teach courses part-time — two jobs that are mostly about getting the details right so that an evening, or a lesson, just works for the people in the room.

When I build things, I aim for the same: tools that quietly do their job every day, like the board at home that tells me when to leave the house.

ETHSG

ETHSG has connected students from ETH Zürich and the University of St. Gallen (HSG) since 2020 — engineers and business students in the same room, with companies that want to meet both. As Head of Operations since September 2025, I work on making our events happen: partners, rooms, sign-ups and everything on the night.

Recent events

  1. Venture capital evening with QBIT Capital

    How VCs find and back startups, at their office in Technopark Zürich · around 25 students

  2. An evening with Nokia

    AI in product development and in corporate treasury, three talks with Q&A · HSG

  3. AMD Innovation Workshop: AI at the edge, with Red Bull Basement

    Live demo of an AI voice assistant running fully on a laptop · ETH Zürich · up to 70 students

  4. Swiss AI Hackathon

    24 hours from idea to working product, with ETHSG as a university partner

  5. Presentation workshop with Leonteq

    Presenting like a pro, then an apéro with traders and quants · Zürich

  6. Get-together with Capgemini Invent

    How digital transformation work looks from the inside · Zürich

Projects

Home board

Live · private

A dashboard for home that answers the morning questions at a glance: when do I need to leave, is my train on time, do I need an umbrella?

What it shows

  • Live train departures with delays, platforms and cancellations
  • The next connections to the two cities I travel to most, including changes
  • The next buses, with a "leave in 4 min" countdown that accounts for the walk
  • Weather, rain chances and air quality from MeteoSwiss data
  • Which car-sharing cars are free nearby
  • Goes dark overnight and wakes up again at 5:30

How it's built

  • Server-rendered React running on Cloudflare Workers, close to the screen that shows it
  • Swiss public-transport data through the Open Journey Planner (OJP 2.0) API
  • Trimming the API's 400 KB answers before parsing cut processing from 34 ms to 2 ms per request
  • Private by default: each device unlocks once with a signed access link
  • 50+ automated tests run on every push before it deploys itself
  • Built to run full-screen on a Raspberry Pi in kiosk mode
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Vite
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • OJP 2.0
  • GitHub Actions
  • Raspberry Pi

CV

Education

  1. 2022 – 2027

    BSc Electrical Engineering and Information Technology

    ETH Zürich · switched from Computational Science and Engineering

Leadership

  1. Since 2025

    Head of Operations

    ETHSG · volunteer

    Running events that connect ETH and HSG students with companies such as AMD, Nokia and Leonteq. Recent events

Experience

  1. Since 2024

    Course Instructor

    Lern- und Sprachsysteme Mühlebach AG · part-time

  2. Since 2024

    Course Instructor

    Tastaturschreiben Schweiz · part-time