News

Season VI of Science Battles at HSE University is entering the homestretch. The June semi-final determined the list of finalists and helped many viewers choose their favourites. This time, young researchers decided to figure out how to conduct a police lineup without destroying a person’s life, as well as how to improve a child’s academic performance without instilling neurotic perfectionism. They also found out that fungi and mould help heal scars and save the environment, and that adherents of post-feminism have very mixed feelings about their own images on TikTok.

On May 20, the ‘Day of Light’ was held for the first time at the HSE University building on Basmannaya Ulitsa. The event was organised and conducted by students of the Faculty of Physics, who told junior students and schoolchildren about the latest scientific achievements.

HSE University took the first place in the TOP-COMM ranking of organisations in the field of corporate communications and relations in Russia. For the second year in a row, Andrey Lavrov, Senior Director for Communications at HSE University, was recognised ‘for the most effective work in the field of external communications of corporations in Russia.’ He also topped the ranking of communication managers in the field of education and science.

Physicists from the Joint Institute for High Temperatures of RAS, HSE University, and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technologies have developed the first open-source GPU-based code for the simulation of microparticles motion in a plasma flow.  OpenDust is optimised for graphics accelerators, that allows it to calculate the forces acting on microparticles significantly faster than existing alternatives. A paper with the findings has been published in Computer Physics Communications.

HSE University has hosted the signing of cooperation agreements with two Iranian universities—Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU) and the University of Isfahan (UI). Delegations from the universities led by ATU President Abdollah Motamedi and UI President Hossein Harsij visited HSE University and met with Rector Nikita Anisimov and staff of the HSE International Office led by Vice Rector Victoria Panova.

Shweta Sikhwal, from India, is a research assistant at the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development of the HSE University Institute for Industrial and Market Studies. In a seminar on May 26, 2023, she presented her paper ‘Can machine learning models provide a better forecast of money demand? Evidence from the Indian economy’ as part of a series on ‘Institutional Problems of the Russian Economy’. Shweta spoke to the HSE News Service about the seminar, her PhD research, and her experience of life in Moscow.

On June 10, the CREATIVE HUB space will host lectures and concert performances by teachers and students of Sound Art and Sound Design. The event programme will run from 5 pm–10 pm and features student compositions and works by modern composers.

A team made up of HSE researchers and paediatricians of the Turner Research Institute for Children’s Orthopedics have compared the cognitive functions of children with and without arthrogryposis. The experiment revealed that children with arthrogryposis exhibit a slight delay of a few milliseconds in their brain responses to words associated with hand movements. The researchers suggest that this discovery be taken into consideration when teaching children with motor impairments and developing diagnostic tools. The paper has been published in Clinical Neurophysiology.