This year, ETRA, the leading international conference in the field of eye tracking, will take place for the 13th time. From May 24 to 27, around 250 participants will come together virtually under the motto "Bridging Communities". The declared goal of the conference is "to bring together eye tracking researchers from Computer Science and Psychology/Cognitive Science".
Together with psychologist Anke Huckauf from the University of Ulm, Andreas Bulling from the Department "Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Systems" of the Institute for Visualisation and Interactive Systems (VIS), as General Chair, is primarily responsible for the organization and implementation of the conference this year. In 2020, the conference had to be cancelled at short notice due to the Corona pandemic. Next to Andreas Bulling, also other VIS/VISUS members contribute to the conference, such as Tanja Blascheck, Daniel Weiskopf and doctoral researcher Ekta Sood. Besides being General Chair, Andreas Bulling is also Organizer of "PrEThics – 1st International Workshop on Privacy and Ethics in Eye Tracking".
Eye tracking has become an important methodology in the field of user modeling in recent years, e.g. to gain insights into human cognition. Thus, the topic is also directly related to the work in the Cluster of Excellence SimTech, where it is being investigated by Ekta Sood and Thang Vu, among others, in the project "Data-integrated simulation of human perception and cognition" (PN 7-5). Eye tracking is also an increasingly important topic in the context of virtual reality.