Every year, the master's programmes at the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (HSE MIEM) attract a large number of students from Africa and the Middle East. Each of them follows a unique path towards becoming an engineering professional. Ahead of receiving their degrees, several graduates shared their personal stories about how they chose their profession and what they learned during their time at HSE.

Felicia Akpelike, from Ghana, is a first-year student of the Master's in Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication at the HSE School of Foreign Languages. In her interview with the HSE News Service, she talks about why she enjoys Russian language and culture, the benefits of studying in an international environment, and the importance of stepping outside your comfort zone.

An international team of researchers, including scientists from HSE University–St Petersburg, has developed microlasers that emit deep-ultraviolet light at a wavelength of 255 nanometres. The devices operate at room temperature, and the smallest of them measures just two micrometres in diameter—roughly the size of a bacterium. These microlasers could be used in sensors, spectroscopic systems, photonic chips, and communication devices. The paper has been published in Optics & Laser Technology.

Elizaveta Fomina, second-year student of the Bachelor's programme 'Political Science and World Politics,' spent the autumn semester at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. Read on to find out why you should choose a mobility programme in Asia and how studying abroad helps to develop independence and build global plans.

Lucas Akolzin, from Brazil, is a third-year student of the International Programme 'International Relations and Global Studies.' In his interview with the HSE News Service, he spoke about why he decided to pursue education in international relations, what political leaders inspire him, and how his Russian background encouraged him to study in Moscow.

The Society for Social Choice and Welfare has granted the Young Scholar Paper Award to Angelina Iudina, doctoral student and lecturer at the Department of Mathematics of the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences and Junior Research Fellow at the HSE International Centre of Decision Choice and Analysis. The scientists highlighted her article devoted to solving the problem of choosing the best alternatives based on the results of pairwise comparisons.

The Innovation and Technology Management Conference (InnoTech 2026), organised by Elsevier publishing house in partnership with Tsinghua University, has taken place in Beijing. Olesia Maibakh and Danil Yatskin, researchers from the HSE ISSEK Foresight Centre, presented the findings of the large-scale foresight study ‘IT in Russia: Development Scenarios’ conducted with the support of Yandex.

Scientists from HSE University, MSU, and Tallinn University of Technology have studied a fossil species of ancient brachiopods that lived in a warm sea in what is now northern Estonia more than 445 million years ago. These ancient brachiopods developed a cup-shaped shell with a protective 'cap' that shielded them from overgrowth by other marine organisms. The study has been published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

Researchers at the HSE Centre for Language and Brain have developed a new digital tool for assessing children's phonological processing skills—the ZARYA test battery. It is the first standardised application in Russia designed to provide a fast and reliable assessment of children's ability to distinguish speech sounds, retain them in working memory, and perform phonemic analysis. The app runs on Android tablets and smartphones and is available for download from RuStore.