Higher School of Economics

Academic excellence projects, similar to Russia’s Project 5-100, are common in many countries, but BRICS countries typically have the largest number of universities participating in such projects. That is perhaps why the ranking of the top universities in the five BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – prepared by the QS ranking agency is of particular interest. For two years in a row, 10 Russian universities have been steadily entering the top 50 of this ranking. This time, HSE has taken 37th place, improving its result on last year.

The HSE Faculty of Computer Science has launched the International Laboratory of Stochastic Algorithms and High-Dimensional Inference (HDI Lab). The Lab’s Academic Supervisor,Eric Moulines, and Chief Research Fellow, Vladimir Spokoiny, spoke to us about the fundamental and applied aspects of research performed by the laboratory, their relations with machine learning, and Russian-French academic ties.

International Partner Week at HSE has brought together representatives of 25 universities from 15 countries of Europe, South-East Asia and the U.S., with which HSE has various cooperation agreements. During the event, the participants exchange information about their universities and their internationalization initiatives.

Researchers from the Higher School of Economics and KU Leuven have developed a method of measuring growth in students’ proficiency in digital learning environments. It helps to see the progress of online course participants in dynamics, i.e., to understand how students study and how the course works. The results of the study have been published in the journal Behaviour Research Methods.

HSE has improved its position in two Times Higher Education (THE) rankings compared to last year. The university demonstrated the greatest growth in the Social Sciences category, rising from the 175-200 group to 126-150. Additionally, HSE improved within the 101-125 group of the Business and Economics ranking.

On October 11-12, the HSE St. Petersburg campus hosted the first ever international Kochubey Readings, devoted to the study of private collections in Russia and around the world. The conference took place under the patronage of the Kochubey family, members of which travelled to Russia from France, Belgium, and the U.S.