A short follow-up to my earlier post about ETRA 2026. The conference took place in Marrakech last week, and three of our papers were presented there even though I couldn’t be. Morocco will live rent-free in my head for the rest of my life as the country that rejected my visa application because I’m Iranian. And I couldn’t be prouder to be Iranian: if standing on the right side of history means not getting a visa every now and then, so be it. Anyway, let’s get to the good news!
On the last day of the conference, the WhatsApp notifications started coming in, one after another.
They were from friends and colleagues writing from inside the room: our Late Breaking Work paper, “How Close Can You Go? Minimum Eye-to-Screen Distance for EyeLink 1000 Plus,” had received an Honourable Mention. No official email, no list to refresh, just people who saw my name on the screen and reached for their phones to tell me right away. That is what got to me. Being cheered on by people standing in a room I couldn’t reach turned into one of the warmest moments of my whole PhD. To everyone who wrote that day: thank you for making sure I was part of it.
None of this happens without my co-authors, Renārs Trukša and Roman Bednarik, and the support of the MSCA Doctoral Network Eyes4ICU. And a special thank you to my friend and colleague Iván Franco, who carried the certificate and the Marrakech mosaic lamp they gave the winners all the way to Finland!
The full paper is here if you’d like the details: DOI · code and data