VirtualAlpha
2018 —A portfolio management game for schools. Now a company in Switzerland and Denmark.
01 — About
An IT enthusiast, now studying biology.
I grew up in Mels, under the Churfirsten ridge in eastern Switzerland, and have been an IT enthusiast for about as long as I can remember. That led to a BSc in Computational Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich, four years of part-time software engineering at Netcloud, and a company I started while still at gymnasium.
These days I live in Denmark, exploring the world of biology through an MSc in Bioinformatics at DTU, including an exchange semester at Leiden University.
Alongside that I'm involved in improving the financial literacy of high school students in Switzerland through VirtualAlpha. In my free time I'm often found among fellow nerds discussing niche interests, or working on my homelab and writing about it afterwards.
My dream vacation (home?) is an off-grid cottage with a sauna and lake access, somewhere in the Finnish woods.
Don't complain about things you are not willing to change.
02 — Right now
Three things keeping me busy.
- 01
An MSc in Bioinformatics
Technical University of Denmark · 2025 –
120 ECTS of algorithms, statistics and molecular biology, with an exchange semester at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
- 02
Running VirtualAlpha
Founder & CEO · 2018 –
A portfolio management game for educational institutions and their students, started at gymnasium in 2018.
- 03
Writing and self-hosting
blog.ackd.xyz · homelab
I self-host a lot of applications and have a blog where I sometimes share my thoughts.
03 — Trajectory
The route so far.
HEAD · 2026
- 2025 —
MSc Bioinformatics
- 2025 —
Software Engineering Consultant
- 2021 – 2025
BSc Computational Science and Engineering
- 2021 – 2025
Software Engineer, part-time
- 2020 – 2021
Cyber-Course
- 2018 —
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
- 2018 – 2020
Weekend operations
- 2017 – 2020
Weekend operations
- 2016 – 2020
Matura
04 — Selected work
A few things I've built.
saml2-js
2022 —A maintained fork of Clever/saml2, published on npm as @darioackermann/saml2-js.
cert-manager-webhook-regery
2025DNS01 ACME challenges for regery.com, a registrar cert-manager does not support.
corona-lab.ch
2020 – 2021A web simulation of Covid-19 containment strategies, on the model from Gorji et al.
#keineap2020
2020A petition against holding the 2020 gymnasium finals in St. Gallen, on health grounds.
The homelab
OngoingSelf-hosted Gitea where most of my commits live, and a NAS without its firmware.
Open source11 merged ·7 open · pull requests to projects I don't own
Hover a project to see what I sent them →
05 — Writing
What I've been writing.
06 — Record
Competitions and publications.
Awards
- 2023VIScon Hackathon1stETH Zurich
- 2023Startfeld RohdiamantFinalistSt. Galler Kantonalbank · with VirtualAlpha
- 2022Hilti IT CompetitionGrand finalistTop 9 · grand final in Malaysia
- 2020Swiss Economics OlympiadGoldNational final · International Economics Olympiad
- 2020Best maturity thesesAwardedKantonsschule Sargans
- 2019Swiss Philosophy OlympiadBronzeNational final
Publications
- 2025High-Fidelity Mesh Generation for Gyrotron Modeling: Integrating Gmsh for Parametric 2D and 3D Electron Optics
- 2021A debit card for the future — tackling climate change with a privacy-enhancing solution
- 2020"Your entire life is online — and might be used against you": reproducible attack scenarios and evaluations
07 — Beyond the keyboard
Extracurriculars.
- 2024 —Volunteer, VIScon Hackathon·technical team, for the hackathon I won in 2023
- 2021 —Volunteer, Science Olympiad Switzerland
- 2024Locked Shields·the world's largest cyber defence exercise
- 2021 – 2022Department Head, Political Projects·Young Green Liberal Party, canton of St. Gallen
- 202110th International Swiss Talent Forum·on the theme «Rethinking surveillance»
- 2017 – 2020Instructor, «tablet heroes»·teaching seniors to use the tablet, for infoklick.ch
- 2016 – 2020Tech-Mentor·Kantonsschule Sargans
- 2015 – 2018Volunteer website manager·Volley Pizol, Sargans