Society News at HSE University

HSE University recently held the ‘Magic World’ inclusive charity festival at Bauman Garden in Moscow. The guests included children from four orphanages sponsored by HSE, as well as anyone else who was interested. The HSE News Service provides a summary of the festival’s activities below.

On May 30 and 31, the HSE Institute for Agrarian Studies held an international forum on agricultural innovation -‘Agrotech 2019. Steps beyond the Horizon’. The participants discussed what governments, business and researchers can do for the sustainable development of agriculture.

On June 3, a meeting with Chris Thaller, Head of Creative Projects at Runtastic by adidas and founder of the Parley Foundation, who is involved in a project to gather and recycle oceanic plastic, will take place at HSE University.

The new workout culture has brought new popularity to the lonely pull-up bars that stand in residential neighborhoods across the country. Now thousands of people have discovered that they can get into shape easily, at no cost, and by working out as little as 10 minutes per day. WorkOut City Streets Fitness founder Anton Kuchumov explained how he turned street workouts into a social project, how he is getting Russia’s nuclear power plant employees in shape, and why he is no fan of fitness clubs.

On May 14, the 72nd Cannes Film Festival opens with Jim Jarmusch’s film, The Dead Don't Die. The official Russian delegation to the festival includes students of the Higher School of Cinema ‘Arka’, which offers joint continuing education programmes with HSE’s Faculty of Communications, Media, and Design. Students' short films will be shown as part of the annual almanac, Global Russians.

In the pursuit of digital projects, interesting business niches sometimes go unfilled. Higher School of Economics graduate Mikhail Pakhomov, founder and CEO of Cosmodrome Games, turned an analog project into a profitable venture. He told Success Builder how board games are created, how to turn a hobby into a source of income, and how to buck the trend towards all things digital.

The new patented method is based on a superposition of functions and considerably enhances the speed and precision of Big Data processing. The project’s authors are Fuad Aleskerov, Tenured Professor at HSE and Head of the International Laboratory of Decision Choice and Analysis, Laboratory Researchers Sergey Shvydun, Evgeny Mitichkin and Vyacheslav Yakuba, as well as Vyacheslav Chistyakov, Professor at the HSE Campus in Nizhny Novgorod.

When a new direction is being formed in the market, it’s possible to recognize the hype, create the rules yourself, and get rich on your own creativity. In the latest edition of Success Builder, the director of media product development at Russian social networking site VKontakte, Arseniy Ashomko, discusses what the advertising industry looks like from the inside, how the law is useful in any field, and what makes the company VKontakte special besides the juice bar and gym.