Anthony Hornof Invited as Keynote Speaker for Conference on Eye Tracking
Associate Professor Anthony Hornof will represent the University of Oregon as the keynote speaker at the annual COGAIN (COmmunication by GAze INteraction) conference, to be held in September, 2008, in Prague. COGAIN is a European-Union funded program that is dedicated to advancing the science and technology necessary for people with severe motor impairments to control a computer with their eye movements. COGAIN started in 2004, with 2.9 million Euros of funding from the European Commission's Information Society Technologies 6th framework program.
There is no equivalent centralized program that is specifically dedicated to advancing communication by gaze interaction in the United States, though the National Science Foundation does fund research with the same goals as COGAIN in Dr. Hornof's Cognitive Modeling and Eye Tracking Lab at the University of Oregon.
"My lab was very much aware when COGAIN started, and for us it did a couple things," says Dr. Hornof. "First, it provided a really exciting confirmation that the work we were doing along the same lines was very important. Second, it made us a little concerned that all of this exciting and important research would be happening so far away. But over the years, we have been able to have a lot of great interaction with various COGAIN partners. And attending their annual meeting as the keynote speaker will certainly foster even more great collaboration."