The final of the ninth season of Science Battles took place at the HSE Cultural Centre in late September. Researchers presented four projects. The speakers explored the boundaries between humans and artificial intelligence, digital platforms and their users, the state and social infrastructure, as well as the distinction between how society defines an individual and how that individual defines themselves.

The HSE International Laboratory of Cluster Geometry focuses on establishing a new scientific discipline that brings together knowledge from different areas of mathematics. Its researchers study families of curves and develop methods that are used to investigate the physical microworld. The HSE News Service spoke with the laboratory’s head, Prof. Sergei Lando.

On October 26, the first International Space Games will kick off in Moscow. Teams from Russia, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan will take part in this new engineering project. Participants will live and work in a simulation of a real space mission. HSE University is acting as project initiator and operator.

Specially for students of Tokai University (Japan), the team of the Centre for Russian Language and Culture at HSE University–St Petersburg developed an online programme that teaches the Russian language in modern animated cartoons. For three weeks, the students learned how to talk about their daily routine, learned about Russian holidays and traditions, and discussed education and cuisine—all through the lens of popular and independent cartoons.

What is China today—a vast manufacturing hub, a technological superpower, or a distinct civilisational model that is gradually reshaping conventional perceptions of the global economy? What do Russian entrepreneurs need to know to ensure that cooperation with Chinese partners delivers tangible results? These questions were at the heart of the lecture delivered to ICEF students by Prof. Aleksey Maslov, a leading Russian expert on China and Asian countries and visiting lecturer at HSE University.

Around 300 international students at HSE University took part in Russian Culture Day. Students from Nigeria, Ghana, Indonesia, Egypt, Vietnam, China, Pakistan, Brazil, and other countries joined their Russian peers to discover Russian traditions, try their hand at playing traditional Russian folk instruments, and take part in quizzes testing their knowledge of Russian history and culture.

Nikita Lavrenov is a second-year student in the Master's programme in Innovation Business Management. During his first year of study, he began exploring emerging technology markets, testing hypotheses, and speaking with potential clients. This led to the creation of Oopps.ai, a FinOps project that helps companies analyse cloud infrastructure costs and identify opportunities for optimisation. 

The HSE AI and Digital Science Institute presented a multi-agent hardware–software system that analyses the parameters of industrial equipment and helps detect signs of malfunction at an early stage. The system was presented at the 4^th Professional Conference for the IT and Engineering Community in the Oil and Gas Industry. 

Maxim Zhiganov has been exploring different aspects of sound for many years—first in relation to his native Perm and then on a broader, global scale. In this interview for the HSE Young Scientists project, he talks about sound maps, the special issue of the journal Logos, and why it is important to make the familiar less clear and obvious.