News

In the Expert Analytical Centre’s 2020 Publication Activity Ranking, HSE University placed among the top three Russian universities in seven general subject areas and two narrow subjects. HSE made the rankings in 14 subject areas and four specific subjects; of these, HSE placed first in four subjects and/or areas.

The first research seminar of the International Laboratory of Statistical and Computational Genomics had been postponed almost a month due to COVID-19. In April, however, the event finally took place. Laboratory Head Vladimir Shchur discusses what life is like for scientists in self-isolation during the pandemic, what genomics is, and why gesturing is important when teaching online.

Artyom Volgin and Ekaterina Melianova, second-year students of the Master’s programme in Applied Statistics with Network Analysis, outperformed more than 100 teams from different countries to take first place in the DS4G: Environmental Insights Explorer Competition hosted by Kaggle.

The HSE Institute for Social Policy is renewing its monitoring of the population’s socio-economic status and social well-being. The first issue includes a 2019 summary and short analysis of the trends related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Experts have concluded that many unfavourable trends were not overcome last year and that the current crisis will worsen the situation.

Mikhail Blinkin, Director of the HSE Institute for Transport Economics and Transport Policy Studies, speculated about whether private automobile transportation will expel buses and trams from city streets in the post-virus future.

The ‘digital age’ of education did not just dawn — it burst upon us like a tsunami. Long-term, systematic strategies for the transition to online learning have been swept away by global problems, and primarily the COVID-19 pandemic and measures for stopping it. In this Op-Ed, Institute of Education research fellow and Russian post-doc recruiter Daria Shcheglova tells IQ.HSE how some students might have been overlooked in the feverish rush to digitalize education.

In the 2020-2021 academic year, students of the HSE Master's Programme ‘Cognitive Sciences and Technologies: from Neuron to Cognition’ will be able to additionally apply for a continuous Master’s/PhD track. Studying in a single programme, they will participate in the international project iBRAIN, organized by leading European universities.

April International Academic Conference is held in a distributed format this year, with some sessions broadcast online and papers and video presentations from others posted on the conference website. Professor Dr Ger Graus, first Global Director of Education at KidZania, is an invited speaker at Digital Transformation of Education session that is also conducted in this new distributed form. His paper is devoted to preparing children for digital era through non-formal education.

In late March at the Kommunarka COVID-19 Hospital outside of Moscow, a pilot project was launched that allows healthcare professionals to coordinate their efforts remotely while working with coronavirus patients. The system, which is run using ‘smart glasses’, is now in operation at ten Moscow hospitals. Ilya Flaks, a graduate of HSE’s Master’s Programme in E-Business and project founder, spoke with the HSE News Service about how the smart glasses help doctors and what prospects lie ahead for using virtual reality (VR) in health care.

The OECD Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy (STP) held its first meeting of the year in early April. HSE staff members Mikhail Gershman, Dirk Meissner and Elena Sabelnikova joined Ministry of Education and Science representatives as members of the Russian delegation to the event. Here, they explain which approaches participants discussed for combating the coronavirus and for preventing other global crises.