The 6th TCS Excellence in Computer Science Week (TECS Week 2008) was held at TRDDC, Pune from 7–11 January 2008. It was conducted by Tata Research Development and Design Centre (TRDDC) jointly with United Nations University (UNU/IIST) and Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS). Each TECS Week is an advanced workshop on a relevant topic related to computer science and software engineering, and aims at providing high-quality computer science education to students, teachers and practitioners from developing countries. 

The topic for TECS Week 2008 was Human Computer Interaction, Virtual Reality, and Data Visualization.  Five experts of international repute delivered a series of lectures on a variety of topics relevant to the theme of the workshop. The lectures were a mix of fundamental principles and the frontiers of the field.

The speakers were Dr. Stephen Ellis from NASA Ames Research Center, Professors Tamara Munzner from the University of British Columbia,  Sethuraman Panchanathan from the Arizona State University, Harold Thimbleby from the University of Swansea, and Dr. Kentaro Toyama from  Microsoft Research, India.

Stephen Ellis ( NASA AMES Research Center , USA )  talked about principles of communicating data through pictures (with application to visualizing radar data in aircraft cockpits), interactive and virtual environments, and latency in virtual environments.

Sethuraman Panchanathan ( Arizona State University , USA )  lectured on Human Centric Multimedia computing, multimodal rehabilitative devices, their interface issues, and surgical simulation interfaces.

Tamara Munzner ( University of British Columbia , Canada ) spoke about various aspects of Information Visualization. Besides design principles, she elucidated factors like perception, color and space.  She extensively surveyed the latest developments on problems in obtaining multiple but coherent views of data, navigating through large data and visualizing high-dimensional data.

Kentaro Toyama (Microsoft Research , India )   talked about technologies for socio-economic development. His talks described the various projects that he is currently involved in attempting to use information technology for the benefit of the rural and urban poor. He listed out the challenges in designing user interfaces for computers catering to illiterate and semiliterate populations and for the spread of literacy among children.

A guest lecture was delivered by Professor Ravin Balakrishnan from the University of Toronto .

The lectures were in the spirit of the theme: highly practical and application oriented. They demonstrated the use of cutting technologies for solving a variety of problems in Human-Computer Interaction and Data Visualization. The lectures were extremely interactive because of enthusiastic audience participation.

In addition to its pedagogical value, the workshop was instrumental in establishing a rapport between students and researchers from developing countries and the experts who delivered the talks.

The participants expressed their satisfaction at the choice of the theme, the lectures and the overall organization of the workshop, and declared the workshop to be a great learning experience.