May 9, 2022 Kim and Fawaz win Facebook research award for eye tracking privacy Written By: Jason Daley Departments: Electrical & Computer Engineering Categories: Awards|Faculty|Research Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professors Younghyun Kim and Kassem Fawaz are the winners of a research award from Facebook. Kassem Fawaz The awards, called Towards Trustworthy Products in AR, VR, and Smart Devices, address the unique security and privacy concerns for users in emerging augmented and virtual reality ecosystems. The company solicited research projects to address issues like biometric and multifactor authentication methods for mixed-reality products, privacy-preserving controls for eye-tracking and privacy and assurance in 3D point clouds for mixed reality. Younghyun Kim Kim and Fawaz’s research proposal involves developing usable privacy controls for real-time eye tracking in AR/VR. A wide range of interactive systems now employ eye-tracking technology to understand what a user is looking at. However, these systems can also track a user’s interests, state of mind and even some health issues. The team is working on software solutions that can integrate with current eye-tracking systems and operate in real time to provide a guarantee of privacy in AR and VR environments.