ETRA 2019

Abstract

Technological advances in computing and sensing devices from one side and the crucial role that eye tracking plays in near-eye displays (e.g., in VR/AR devices) and driver assistance systems from the other, are moving eye tracking into the mainstream. On the way towards a new human-machine interaction paradigm, fundamental questions have to be answered on how the users want to use this new technology in the future. Discussions about ethical implications and issues of data privacy will be important for the further positive development of eye-tracking technology and its acceptance by the society. Because eye-tracking will become a pervasive technology, possibly affecting millions of people, its misuse has to be avoided.

This panel aims to discuss privacy questions in the eye tracking community to offer a forum for people from the eye tracking, human-computer interaction, other relevant communities, as well as the industry to gather, discuss, and address the privacy as well as confidentiality issues related to eye movement data before it becomes a part of everyday life.

Panelists

Ulrica Wikström (Tobii Tech)

Ulrica Wikström is Vice President of Sales for Tobii Tech’s, Specialty Markets division. She has almost 30 years of experience working in leading roles with well-known Swedish companies. She spent the last 9 years working with eye tracking at Tobii where she has held various positions including Research and Development and Sales and has been involved in every aspect of eye tracking such as eye tracker quality and performance as well as end user privacy. With her extensive knowledge of eye tracking solutions and applications, Ulrica and her team helps customers realize the potential of commercializing their own Tobii-powered, eye tracking products in various segments such as condition assessment, assistive technology, high-end surgery room products and entertainment solutions. Ulrica earned her Masters of Science at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, where she focused on embedded systems. She still lives in Stockholm and in her off time, enjoys being active in sports and living life to the fullest with family and friends.

Andreas Bulling (University of Stuttgart)

Andreas Bulling is Full Professor (W3) of Computer Science at the University of Stuttgart where he holds the chair for Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Systems. He received his MSc. (Dipl.-Inform.) in Computer Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, focusing on embedded systems, robotics, and biomedical engineering. He holds a PhD in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland. Andreas was previously a Feodor Lynen Research Fellow and a Marie Curie Research Fellow in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK, a postdoctoral research associate in the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, UK, as well as a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge. From 2013 – 2018 he was a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and an Independent Research Group Leader (W2) at the Cluster of Excellence on Multimodal Computing and Interaction (MMCI) at Saarland University.

Apu Kapadia (Indiana University Bloomington)

Apu Kapadia is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in October 2005. For his dissertation research on trustworthy communication, he received a four-year High-Performance Computer Science Fellowship from the Department of Energy. Following his doctorate, he joined Dartmouth College as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Institute for Security Technology Studies (ISTS), and then as a Member of Technical Staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Apu Kapadia is interested in topics related to computer security and privacy. He is particularly interested in usable security and HCI; pervasive computing in the context of cameras, wearables, and IoT; and accountable anonymity. For his work on accountable anonymity, two of his papers were named as 'Runners-up for PET Award 2009: Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies'. His work on privacy in the context of wearable cameras received an Honorable Mention Award at ACM CHI 2016. His work on usable privacy controls was given the 'Honorable Mention Award (Runner-up for Best Paper)' at the Conference on Pervasive Computing, 2007.

Apu Kapadia has received eight NSF grants, including an NSF CAREER award in 2013, and a Google Research Award in 2014. He was also a recipient of the Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award in 2013 and a Distinguished Alumni Educator Award from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015. For the years 2015 and 2016, he was Program Co-Chair of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the associated journal Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs).

Enkelejda Kasneci (University of Tübingen)

Enkelejda Kasneci is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Tübingen, Germany, where she leads the Perception Engineering Group. As a BOSCH-scholar, she received her M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the University of Stuttgart in 2007. In 2013, she received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Tübingen, Germany. For her PhD research, she was awarded the research prize of the Federation Südwestmetall in 2014. From 2013 to 2015, she was a Margarete-von-Wrangell Fellow. Dr. Kasneci’s overarching and long-term vision aims at computing systems that sense and infer the user’s cognitive state, actions, and intentions based on eye movements. These systems set out to provide information for assistive technologies applicable for many activities of everyday life. Towards this vision, her research combines eye tracking technology with machine learning in various multidisciplinary projects that are supported by national scientific societies as well as various industrial sources. In addition, she serves as academic for PlosOne as well as a reviewer and PC member for several journals and major conferences.

Nino Zahirovic (AdHawk Microsystems)

Dr. Nino Zahirovic is a co-founder and the CTO of AdHawk Microsystems, where he leads a multi-disciplinary team to develop eye tracking technology for mobile, wearable, and consumer electronics devices. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2011 where he was the recipient of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology Fellowship and the NSERC PGS-D Award. Following his graduate studies in RF MEMS he joined Ignis Innovation Inc. as Senior Hardware Engineer and subsequently the Director of Engineering. He was a key contributor to the development of OLED display technology that was licensed by Ignis to LG Display that enables the market-leading performance LG OLED flat panels displays.

Since co-founding AdHawk and taking on the role of CTO, Nino’s passion has been to bring AdHawk’s vision of eye tracking as a pervasive human augmentation device to AdHawk’s customers and partners. By precisely steering a beam of light across the eye thousands of times every second, AdHawk’s eye tracker offers unprecedented sensing resolution within a power envelope that is a small fraction of camera-based systems, while leveraging the economies of wafer-scale manufacturing.

Lirong Xia (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI))

Lirong Xia is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Prior to joining RPI in 2013, he was a CRCS fellow and NSF CI Fellow at the Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and M.A. in Economics from Duke University. His research focuses on the intersection of computer science and microeconomics. He is an associate editor of Mathematical Social Sciences and is on the editorial board of Artificial Intelligence Journal. He has served on the editorial board of Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, a Simons-Berkeley Research Fellowship, the 2018 Rensselaer James M. Tien ’66 Early Career Award, and was named as one of "AI's 10 to watch" by IEEE Intelligent Systems.

Moderators

Tanja Blascheck (University of Stuttgart)

Tanja Blascheck is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Visualization and Interactive Systems at the University of Stuttgart. Her main research areas are information visualization and visual analytics with a focus on evaluation, eye tracking, and interaction. She is interested in exploring how to effectively analyze eye tracking data with visualizations and the pervasive use of visualization on novel display technology like smartwatches. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Stuttgart, in 2017.

Eakta Jain (University of Florida)

Eakta Jain is an Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. Her research interests are in leveraging eye tracking to access user priorities for creating algorithms, tools, and interactions in support of creativity and expressiveness for the visual medium. She received her PhD and MS degrees in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and B.Tech. degree is in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur.

Organizers

• Tanja Blascheck (University of Stuttgart)
• Andreas Bulling (University of Stuttgart)
• Eakta Jain (University of Florida)
• Enkelejda Kasneci (University of Tübingen)
• Diako Mardanbegi (AdHawk Microsystems)
• Michael Raschke (Blickshift)

Panel Sponsors

• University of Florida
• Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology (University of Florida)
• SFB-TRR 161 (University of Stuttgart)
• University of Tübingen