Forbes has published its eighth annual ranking of the best Russian higher education institutions. HSE University took first place. Its leadership was secured, among other factors, by strong support from employers and high performance in the Academic Environment metric.

More than 3,000 international school students took part in the INTO HSE International Olympiad, whose award ceremonies were held in Tashkent and Bishkek in March 2026. The university’s outreach events also included final examinations, presentations of academic programmes, and on-site selection tests for prospective applicants. In Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, nearly 200 participants received diplomas as winners and prize-winners. The best of them will be eligible to apply for state-funded places at HSE.

An international team including researchers from the HSE Faculty of Computer Science has presented KoWit-24, an annotated dataset of 2,700 Russian-language news headlines containing wordplay. The dataset enables an assessment of how artificial intelligence detects and interprets wordplay. Experiments with language models show that even advanced systems still make mistakes, and that interpreting wordplay is more challenging for them than detecting it.

From April 1 to 3, 2026, the HSE Pokrovka Campus will host the Fourth Robotics Festival—one of the key events organised by the Faculty of Computer Science for anyone interested in robotics, programming, and engineering creativity. The festival will bring together robotics competitions, discussions, educational formats, and demonstrations of technological developments.

Alexander Shokhin, President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), has been re-elected to lead the organisation for another four-year term. The decision was taken at an RSPP congress session held at the Russia National Centre. Since 1995, Alexander Shokhin has also served as President of HSE University. In addition, he heads HSE’s Department of Theory and Practice of Business–Government Interaction.

The award ceremony for the winners and runners-up of the first International Software Engineering Olympiad PROD took place in Moscow. It was attended by over 4,000 high school students from all Russian regions and 33 other countries, including Armenia, Brazil, Germany, Georgia, Denmark, Israel, Indonesia, China, Congo, Laos, Liberia, the USA, South Korea, and Japan.

HSE University has become the leading Russian educational institution by the number of first-place positions in national graduate employment rankings. The university ranked first in areas such as Mathematics and Mechanics, Computers Science and Engineering, Information Security, Asian and African Studies, Economics and Management, among others.

On March 20, HSE University–St Petersburg hosted a vibrant event dedicated to the ancient Eastern holiday of Nowruz. Uniting the traditions of many peoples, this holiday symbolises the start of the new year and the renewal of nature.

The Machine Learning in Information Security workshop is being launched as part of a strategic cooperation agreement between the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (HSE MIEM) and Ozon. The programme will train specialists capable of ensuring the security of artificial intelligence systems. Students will study methods for protecting large language models and develop tools aimed at improving the resilience of AI systems to attacks.