Katja Hofmann
Partner Research Manager at Microsoft Research Cambridge who led the Muse (WHAM) gameplay model project
- Partner Research Manager, co-leading the People-Centric AI research area, Microsoft Research Cambridge12
- Board member (since 2022) and Secretary of the Board (since 2024), International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)1
Katja Hofmann is a Partner Research Manager at Microsoft Research Cambridge, where Hofmann co-leads the People-Centric AI research area, with work on generative AI, interactive media and game intelligence. Hofmann led the project behind WHAM, the World and Human Action Model that Microsoft introduced as Muse in February 2025, and is one of the four senior authors of the accompanying Nature paper. Hofmann previously led Microsoft Research's Game Intelligence team and serves on the board of the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).123
Role
Hofmann is a Partner Research Manager at Microsoft Research Cambridge and co-leads its People-Centric AI research area, which combines machine learning with human-computer interaction, design and social science. Hofmann previously led the Game Intelligence team, focused on machine learning research for video games, which now forms part of that area.1
Hofmann has served on the board of ICLR since 2022 and as Secretary of the Board since 2024, after serving as Senior Program Chair for ICLR 2021 and General Chair for ICLR 2022.1
Muse and WHAM
On February 19, 2025, Nature published "World and Human Action Models towards gameplay ideation", and Hofmann's Microsoft Research post introduced the model as Muse, a generative AI model for gameplay ideation. The paper's contributions statement says Hofmann led the project, and Microsoft released the WHAM weights and sample gameplay data on Hugging Face.324
Work
Muse (Microsoft Research WHAM)Open weights
Led the WHAM project, per the Nature paper's contributions statement, and wrote Microsoft Research's post introducing Muse as a generative model for gameplay ideation.32
WHAM 1.6B (Muse)Open weights
Listed among the authors on the WHAM model card, and one of the senior authors of the Nature paper describing the model whose weights Microsoft released.43
Career timeline
Related people
More sourced profiles at the same organization, in the same field, or from the same school.
- Adam FourneyAlso at Microsoft Research
- David HaImage, video, and 3D generation
- Andreas C. MüllerAlso at Microsoft
- Aditya GroverImage, video, and 3D generation
- Bin XiaoAlso at Microsoft
- Denis YaratsReinforcement learning
- Charles LamannaAlso at Microsoft
- Jakob FoersterReinforcement learning
- Christopher BishopAlso at Microsoft Research
- Jeff CluneReinforcement learning
- Eric HorvitzAlso at Microsoft
- Josh AlbrechtAgents
Is this you?
Profiles cover public professional work only, and every line cites a source. If something is out of date, missing or wrong, send a correction with a link to an official page and we will update it. Suggest a correction
Add this badge to your website or GitHub profile README. It links back to this page. It is not an endorsement or a rating.
Markdown (for a README)
[](https://unitedstatesofamericasuperintelligence.com/people/katja-hofmann/)
HTML
<a href="https://unitedstatesofamericasuperintelligence.com/people/katja-hofmann/"><img src="https://unitedstatesofamericasuperintelligence.com/badges/profile.svg" alt="Katja Hofmann — Profile on USASI" height="20"></a>
This profile covers public professional work only, from the sources below. It is not an endorsement or a ranking. To correct or remove it, use the correction form.