News

In 2020, against the backdrop of the coronavirus crisis and other global challenges that are increasing uncertainty, HSE University social scientists recorded the most significant shift in people’s perception of current fundamental social and economic issues. In particular, respondents expressed increased approval of the government, higher demands of it, as well as higher levels of ‘profound’ civic activity and self-confidence.

Emiliano Espinosa is from Rosario, an Argentinian city near the Paraná River—not far from Buenos Aires. He first came to Russia 8 years ago, in 2012, for a high school exchange year—he went to a Russian school in Krasnodar and lived with a Russian family. Now, after completing his Bachelor’s at RUDN Moscow, Emiliano Espinosa is a first-year student of the Master’s programme in ‘Media Management’ at HSE University. We spoke with him about his experience of living and studying in Russia.

Aleksey Maslov, Professor at HSE University’s School of Asian Studies and one of its founders, has become a super-media persona this year. This is due to major interest in China amid the pandemic and Beijing’s strained relationship with Washington. In the column ‘HSE University Scientists’, Aleksey Maslov explains how to keep up with everything (spoiler: Shaolin Monastery!), why Russian science has become a ‘fossil’, what scientists should do for self-promotion and why it’s important to look good at the same time.

HSE University together with the mobile network operator company MTS have launched a 360° live streaming system that supports VR format for remotely taught courses. HSE students can now attend lectures online both in regular format and, for the first time in Russia, in augmented reality format. Six lecture halls on HSE’s Moscow campus are now equipped with 360° panoramic video cameras and auto tracking cameras that follow the instructor’s movement in the classroom.

A team of HSE researchers—Nataliya Matveeva, Ivan Sterligov, and Maria Yudkevich—have analyzed the research activity of universities participating in Russia’s  Academic Excellence Project 5-100. Overall, the quality of publications of these universities has improved. Collectively, participating universities have tripled their number of publications in reputable journals in the past three years, and researchers have begun to collaborate with each other more frequently. The study was published in the Journal of Informetrics.

43 projects from all over the country were awarded grants in Russia’s Eighth Mega-Grant Competition. HSE University’s application in support of the creation of a world-class laboratory in mathematics was among the winners. The academic supervisor of the new laboratory will be Professor Michael Shapiro of Michigan State University (USA).

Lev Manovich, Presidential Professor of computer science at the City University of New York and author of works on digital culture and new media, was one of the first foreign scholars to start remote work with HSE students this academic year. He is leading a project seminar at the Faculty of Humanities for students of the Bachelor’s programme in Cultural Studies.

eSTARS 2020, the international education conference organized by HSE University in partnership with the global educational platform Coursera, reached its conclusion on December 2. This year, which marked the annual event’s 3rd meeting, the conference was held entirely online for the first time.