Research & Expertise

Widespread internet access, low-cost mobile communications, convenient online services and banking applications make everyday life more comfortable, access to resources more equal, and society more equitable. Russians’ attitude towards the expansion of technologies such as AI was debated during an expert discussion organised by the HSE University Centre for Social Research and Technological Innovation and the St Petersburg Politics Foundation.

The 8^th Russian Comics Conference ‘The World of Comics’, organised by the HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, took place online in March 2023. Over the two days of the conference, 44 comics researchers from Russia, France, China, and Malaysia presented their papers on comics history, narratives, visuals, and animation.

HSE researchers, in collaboration with their colleagues from Skoltech and the Central Research Institute for Epidemiology, have uncovered the mechanisms behind the emergence of new and dangerous coronavirus variants, such as Alpha, Delta, Omicron, and others. They have discovered that the likelihood of a substitution occurring at a specific site of the SARS-CoV-2 genome is dependent on concordant substitutions occurring at other sites. This explains why new and more contagious variants of the virus can emerge unexpectedly and differ significantly from those that were previously circulating. The study’s findings have been published in eLife.

Researchers from Russia and the U.S. have found language impairment in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to be associated with a lower volume of grey matter and greater gyrification in the temporal and frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex. These regions play a critical role in language functioning. Understanding the structural characteristics that underlie behavioural deficits can aid in designing special education programmes for children with autism. A paper with the study’s findings has been published in Scientific Reports.

Researchers at the HSE Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience have discovered that analysing the electrical activity in the brains of a small group of people and studying their visual attention makes it possible to predict the impact of an online advertising campaign on a much larger group of 300,000 consumers. The paper has been published in Brain Sciences.

ConCort 2023, a forum dedicated to research in corpus technology and computer science in the humanities, brought together experts and students from all over Russia. The participants discussed the latest developments in corpus linguistics, including the rapidly developing field of digital humanities.

The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation has announced the results of a competition to support the creation and development of centres for technology transfer. A total of 58 applications from universities and research institutes were submitted to the contest. Twenty winning projects have received support, including the HSE University Centre for Technology Transfer. The university plans to become a leader in implementing a cooperative technology transfer model.

Classical economic theory assumes that economic agents are entirely self-interested and rational in their pursuit of material well-being, and that they are not affected by external factors. As a result, externalities are not considered in any way when constructing economic models. Nevertheless, some sociologists argue for a revision of modern economic theory to incorporate the ethical dimensions of economic agents' behaviour. Kirill Borissov, Professor of the Faculty of Economics at the European University in St Petersburg, spoke at the XXIV Yasin (April) International Academic Conference and shared his observations from creating his own economic model incorporating the factor of envy.  

Throughout the year, the HSE International Laboratory for Social Integration Research (ILSIR) is hosting consulting seminars on ‘Care and Welfare in Post-Socialist Eurasia: Institutions, Discourses, Identities’ with presentations by leading foreign experts. The first seminar in the series, ‘Conceptualising Social Activism’ was held on April 4 with the participation of Professor Linda Cook, Academic Supervisor of HSE ILSIR. The second one will take place on April 18.

The Russian economy has demonstrated high resilience to unprecedented external pressure and has managed to largely adapt to new conditions. As early as this year, it can go from recession to growth. The issue of where to find drivers and resources for this was discussed at a plenary session titled ‘Russian Economy under Sanctions: From Adaptation to Sustainable Growth’ at the XXIV Yasin (April) International Academic Conference held at HSE University as part of the Decade of Science and Technology. Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Maksim Reshetnikov took part in the discussion.