Mediaengineer by training, Nature lover, designing tech for actual humans.
Niko Pallas — HCI graduate student at LMU Munich / CDTM and media engineer with 5+ years building interfaces, experiences, and real-time content for live productions. Looking for a master’s thesis at the intersection of human-centered-AI, embodied interaction, and applied research.
Selected work
Zen Belt — Intelligent Deformable Interfaces for Guided Breathing
A wearable belt that guides box-breathing through pressure, vibration, and audio - sensing your breath instead of dictating it.
VirtuEnkel — Patient Tech Support for Seniors
A retro desk lamp that coaches seniors through their own smartphones — using voice and a laser that points at the screen.
CollaboRobot — Nonverbal Human–Robot Negotiation
A human and a robot arm decide what to cook together — no speech, no script, just ingredients moving between zones.
circle — Reciprocal Prompts for Closer Friendships
A daily question for the people you already care about — answer first, then see.
LED-Wall Color Correction — Following the Viewing Angle
Measuring why a camera never sees the color an LED wall shows — and building a correction that follows the viewing angle.
Neumann & Müller — Interactive Exhibits & Real-Time
Designing, developing, and programming interactive exhibits and real-time content for fairs, events, and live shows.
Freelance XR & Virtual Production
Designing and operating live XR / virtual-production stages for broadcast — real-time Unreal scenes on disguise media servers, live and unscripted.
Young Explorers Program — Empowering Young Changemakers
Ten years empowering young people to fall in love with wild nature infront of their doorsteps and to become changemakers for biodiversity and climate
Photography
An ongoing photographic practice — landscapes, portraits, and documentary work that feeds back into how I think about framing and light in everything else I build.
Ekstase — Animated Short
A 3D animated short film: the energy of music triggers a euphoria in which the inner self escapes and reshapes the exterior.
Opera — Media Design & Projection Mapping
Visual design and on-stage projection media for a contemporary staging of the Orpheus myth.
From building “cool stuff” to researching how people use them.
Munich, Germany
- M.Sc. HCI · LMU Munich
- CDTM Honors · Technology Management
- B.Eng. Audiovisual Media · HdM Stuttgart
- AI-Human interaction
- Embodied & tangible interaction
- Human-centered security
- Human-robot interaction
Background. I came to HCI from industry — building interactive exhibits and live virtual productions at Neumann & Müller before moving into my Masters in HCI at LMU Munich, alongside CDTM's Technology Management track.
How I Work. I like projects with a physical prototype in the loop: haptic devices, sensor rigs, robots. A mix of engineering and HCI research methods, usually somewhere between a literature gap and a working thing people can try.
Beyond Research & Work. Since 2016 I've led the Young Explorers Program (wilderness and biodiversity education for young adults), and I was the first employee at Hula Earth, an early-stage biodiversity-monitoring startup, for the past 1.5 years.