Society news at HSE University

The winners of the Yegor Gaidar Foundation were announced on November 17, and HSE staff were among those recognized in three nominations.

HSE graduate Mikael Yan and his company are part of the world’s largest startup accelerator, 500 Startups. In an interview with Success Builder, Mikael talks about the benefits of chat robots, how to stay positive when talking with investors, and how he became part of 500 Startups after getting a flat tire on a San Francisco highway.

Sergey Kavtaradze’s ‘The Anatomy of Architecture: Seven Books on Logic, Form and Meaning’ – published by the HSE Publishing House – has been awarded the Enlightener Prize in the Humanities category.

In June 2014, a law was passed that requires participants of the housing and utilities market, including management companies and homeowner associations, to move all of their data to the Government Services Portal (www.gosuslugi.ru). Virtually overnight, this created an enormous market for IT companies capable of helping resolve issues associated with automating the transfer. The company Telecom-Project, which was founded by HSE graduate Evgeny Tsaplin, is currently a leader in this market.

In September 2016, an exhibition entitled ‘Osip Mandelstam: Word and Destiny’ opened in Granada. This event has been organized by HSE Mandelstam Centre, the State Literature Museum, the Mandelstam Society and UNESCO Cities of Literature Heidelberg and Granada.

Staff members at the HSE Neurolinguistics Laboratory have developed an information booklet for families of people with aphasia - speech disorders caused by brain lesions.

Contrary to what sci-fi lovers might expect, robots are not trying to enslave the human race, but instead are engaged in much more peaceful things like performing onstage. This is the type of creative application that the company Robots City, whose IT department is currently headed by HSE MIEM graduate Sergei Borhsenius, has found for robots. In the latest edition of Success Builder, Sergei discusses why robots are able to read Shakespeare sonnets, but haven’t yet made it to Hamlet; what future programmers should prepare for; and how an introverted mathematician can become a manager.

Several HSE graduates worked at the Olympic Games, which recently came to a close in Rio. Elena Stenkina, Daria Smirnova, and Evgenia Dolina told the HSE news service how they came into the sports industry thanks to HSE, even though several years ago they couldn’t even imagine having anything to do with sports.