The conference is hosted by Tallinn University. Tallinn University is the youngest among all universities in Estonia. It was founded in 2005 as a merger of different universities and research institutions in Tallinn. Since then, it has been growing quickly and has now a student body of over 9,000 students (with 10% of them international), and over 900 employees, including over 400 researchers and lecturers.
The University consists of 6 institutes, 1 regional college, 5 centres of excellence, 8 research centres and 13 support units. Academic institutes are competence centres in their specific field(s) and are active both in research and teaching. The five focus fields of the university are: digital technologies and media culture, educational innovation, cultural competences, healthy and sustainable lifestyle and society and open governance.
The conference will be organised by the HCI group in School of Digital Technologies. In addition, there are more than 35 PhD students working in areas from human-computer interaction to digital learning ecosystems and applied mathematics.
The HCI group of School of Digital Technologies was established in 2009. The group carries out research in areas of distributed user interfaces and brain-computer interaction, trust, wellbeing, design theory and methods.
The group is also responsible for the master’s program in Human-Computer Interaction that was established in 2009. The HCI group is running several labs, including interaction design lab, user experience evaluation lab and a hardware prototyping lab. HCI group members participate in the work of the Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture as well as in the Centre of Excellence in Education Innovation, both bringing together researchers from different disciplines within the university.
Tallinn University has a mission to actively participate in the discussions of shaping the society towards sustainability and wellbeing. It is a member of the Green Academic Footprint initiative and aims towards making the principles of sustainable development part of everyday life. The University has defined itself as an environment for professional and personal growth for all of its members. It functions not as a hierarchical organisation, but as a community of scholars and creative people, where decision-making power has in most matters been delegated to those who are affected by them.