Congratulations to the students of our master's programme on winning the Potanin Foundation scholarship competition
This year, two students of the master's programme 'Applied Statistics with Network Analysis Methods' became winners of the Potanin Foundation scholarship competition.
Irina Pavlova, deputy head of the International Laboratory for Applied Network Research and deputy academic director of the master's programme “Data Analytics and Social Statistics”:
This scholarship competition is the oldest project of the Potanin Foundation in the field of supporting higher education, which is held annually. Both first- and second-year master's students can take part in it. The competitive selection is very serious. This year, 6,416 people from 75 universities in the country took part in the competition, but only 750 people became winners.
About the scholarship programme:
'The competition is aimed at supporting students from 75 Russian universities participating in the Vladimir Potanin Scholarship Programme. The competition is open to undergraduates and students at the level of specialized higher education of the current pilot project of full-time education. The focus of the competition is the development of an educational environment that accumulates the values of knowledge, professionalism and creativity and ensures positive changes in society.'
We are very pleased that this year two first-year students of our MASNA master's programme, Vladislav Zubov and Arsen Khabibullin, became scholarship recipients of the Potanin Foundation competition. As we know, there are often a number of restrictions for scholarship competitions, when only state-funded students can participate. Therefore, for our programme, the absolute advantage of such a competition is that both students studying in budgetary and paid places can take part in it.
Scholarship competition 2023/2024: Start of stage II and additional opportunities for finalists
'The second stage of the competition for the Vladimir Potanin scholarship 2023/2024 will begin on January 26. It will be attended by 2,000 undergraduates and students at the level of specialized higher education of the current pilot project of full-time education from 75 universities participating in the Vladimir Potanin Scholarship Program, who have successfully completed the first stage. In stage II, which traditionally will be held online, participants will be invited to business games, interviews, case solutions and other group and individual formats. Based on the results of two stages, experts will determine 750 winners who will receive a personal scholarship from Vladimir Potanin...'
The competition itself is very well known to master's students, because the financial support itself, thanks to winning the competition, turns out to be quite significant. The winners will receive a monthly Vladimir Potanin scholarship in the amount of 25 thousand rubles starting from February 2024 until the end of their studies. Please note that students will need to confirm their status in the programme – monitoring of progress is required.
Results of the 2023/2024 scholarship competition:
'Since 2000, more than 30 thousand students have become Foundation scholarship holders, and since the last transformation of the competition in the 2013/2014 season – 5,350 people. Over 10 years, the size of the scholarship increased from 15,000 to 25,000 rubles, and the total amount of support exceeded 1 billion rubles... The focus of the competition, its format, the size of scholarships and the number of winners changed. However, the goal remained unchanged – to support the most active, talented and involved students from Russian universities to form a community of creative professionals and consolidate their efforts in solving complex social problems.'
Students of our master's programme are actively involved in the scientific work and projects of ANR-Lab, which implements the educational program. This year, the Applied Statistics with Network Analysis programme has a new name, Data Analytics and Applied Statistics, but we continue to offer students exposure to advanced applied statistics and network analysis methods. Actually, a master's degree is not only about education, but also about research. Our students become our colleagues in scientific and commercial projects.
Vladislav Zubov
student of the master's programme 'Applied Statistics with Network Analysis'
I conduct research in the field of speech perception, I am interested in the structure of the mental lexicon – our internal dictionary. In my course work, I plan to describe different approaches to describing the structure of connections between words in the Russian language, including using network analysis.
Arsen Khabibullin
student of the master's programme 'Applied Statistics with Network Analysis'
My coursework in the master's programme is related to the work done on the diploma in the bachelor's degree. I was working with decision tree tools and wondered why in sociology traditionally three or four classification tree algorithms are used, when there are many times more of these algorithms in the ML and DS fields. Actually, the topic of the diploma was precisely a comparison of the cognitive capabilities of two groups of decision tree algorithms – “classical” and “new”. Now I am expanding the perspective and comparing the performance of traditional classification tree algorithms (using bagging) with the ensemble method of random forests. The main idea is to make comparisons and offer researchers recommendations on the use of certain algorithms depending on their conditions and necessary criteria (such as the running time of the algorithm, data limitations, missing values, etc.).
We congratulate our students and wish them academic success! And we invite everyone interested in data analytics and the application of applied statistics methods to solve problems in various fields to enroll in our master’s programme!