Benjamin Hoffman

PhD Researcher, ETH Zurich

bhoffman [AT] ethz.ch

Hi! I am a PhD researcher in the Networked Systems Group (NSG) at ETH Zurich and an associated PhD researcher at the ETH AI Center, working on Machine Learning (ML), control, and language models in systems and networking under the supervision of Prof. Laurent Vanbever. I'm interested in using algorithms, ML, and control theory to understand how complex systems and networks work and how we can model, interpret, and control them in a safe, robust, and efficient manner. My current research revolves around enabling ML-based models and controllers to generalize efficiently across different contexts and tasks, for example video streaming or congestion control. Beyond that, I am also interested in improving the networking stack for AI applications and ML workloads.

Prior to starting my PhD, I obtained a BSc in Mechanical Engineering and a MSc in Robotics, Systems and Control from ETH Zurich. During my master's, I did an academic exchange at Lund University in Sweden. For my master's thesis, I worked on Reinforcement Learning (RL) with the Computational Robotics Lab (CRL) (Prof. Stelian Coros), as well as the Learning & Adaptive Systems Group (LAS) (Prof. Andreas Krause) at the ETH AI Center.

I have also done internships in management consulting at Bain & Company, in data science and ML at eraneos, and in robotics, software engineering, and ML at Güdel. Outside of my research, I am involved in local politics and am very interested in diplomacy, international development, policy, and economics.

News
Nov 2025 Presented our paper 'Into the Wild: Real-World Testing for ML-Based ABR' at ACM PACMI 2025 in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Nov 2025 Our paper 'Learning More With Less: Sample Efficient Model-Based RL for Loco-Manipulation' was accepted to the workshop on Resource-Rational Robot Learning at CoRL 2025 in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Sep 2025 Presented our poster 'Towards Network Model Generalization using Strategic Data Collection' at ACM SIGCOMM 2025 in Coimbra, Portugal.
Feb 2025 Started my PhD at ETH Zurich in the Networked Systems Group under the supervision of Prof. Laurent Vanbever.

Research

Find my most recent publications on Google Scholar.

Into the Wild: Real-World Testing for ML-Based ABR

Benjamin Hoffman, Alexander Dietmüller, Ayush Mishra, Laurent Vanbever

ACM PACMI 2025

Paper Slides Code Website

Learning More With Less: Sample Efficient Model-Based RL for Loco-Manipulation

Benjamin Hoffman, Jin Cheng, Chenhao Li, Stelian Coros

CoRL 2025 (Workshop)

Paper Poster Website

Towards Network Model Generalization using Strategic Data Collection

Benjamin Hoffman, Alexander Dietmüller, Laurent Vanbever

ACM SIGCOMM 2025 (Poster)

Paper Poster

State Estimation for Legged Robots

Benjamin Hoffman

ETH Research Collection 2021 (Bachelor Thesis)

Paper

Into the Wild: Real-World Testing for ML-Based ABR

Benjamin Hoffman, Alexander Dietmüller, Ayush Mishra, Laurent Vanbever

ACM PACMI 2025

Paper Slides Code Website

Learning More With Less: Sample Efficient Model-Based RL for Loco-Manipulation

Benjamin Hoffman, Jin Cheng, Chenhao Li, Stelian Coros

CoRL 2025 (Workshop)

Paper Poster Website

Towards Network Model Generalization using Strategic Data Collection

Benjamin Hoffman, Alexander Dietmüller, Laurent Vanbever

ACM SIGCOMM 2025 (Poster)

Paper Poster

Student Projects

I have had the pleasure to supervise and collaborate with great students for thesis and semester projects. Should you be interested in working with me, don't hesitate to reach out! You can also check out my currently available theses here. Some current and past projects include:

Fine-Tuning LLMs for Network Data Understanding

Rufat Asadli

Co-supervised MSc Thesis – Fall 2025

Introducing Tariffs on Internet Traffic

Maxime Hilbig

Co-supervised Semester Thesis – Spring 2026

CCA-Arena: Real-World Evaluation of Congestion Control Algorithms

Enzo Baraldi

Co-supervised Semester Thesis – Spring 2026

CV

Find my full resume here.

I used Martin Saveski's template to make this website, you can find it here.