International Programme in Economics and Finance

Moscow-born and raised Alisa Vakhitova is the youngest of three siblings in her family. Alisa developed her interest in economics in high school and enrolled in HSE Lyceum (Economics and Mathematics) after completing ten grades at a regular school near her home. Alise graduated from HSE Lyceum with honors and showed prize-winning performance at the final stage of National Economics Olympiad for school students. A member of the ICEF class of 2024, Alisa worked as an analyst developer at Yandex and is currently completing her master’s in Finance at the University of Cambridge, scheduled to embark on her PhD studies there in September. Here’s Alisa about the stages of her journey and her plans for the future.

ICEF continues to expand its team of internationally qualified faculty members holding PhD degrees. Starting September 2026, a new faculty member will join ICEF: Ali Bakhtawar.

Congratulations to Vincent Fardeau, ICEF Assistant Professor, on acceptance of his paper «Asymmetric Thin Markets» in the international peer-reviewed academic journal The Journal of Financial Economics (JFE). This journal is among the top-3 most prestigious international peer-reviewed journals in finance. Currently, there are only five researchers in Russia who have published in the leading top‑three finance journals — the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. Three of them are faculty members and researchers at ICEF: Alexey Bulatov, Dmitry Makarov, and now Vincent Fardo.

What skills turn a student into an in-demand financial analyst? How to build a development trajectory towards financial expertise already now? The answers can be drawn from the proceedings of the roundtable Financial Analyst Job: The current challenges of skill training and enhancement, contributed by Assistant Professor of ICEF Elena Dimova and ICEF master’s graduate Maria Petrova, who is currently in charge of Sovcombank department. Contributed by more than thirty leading universities and major finance market players such as Sberbank, Sovcombank, B1, and DRT, among others, the roundtable was hosted in the premises of Moscow Exchange and organised by the National Finance Association and the CFA Association with the Bank of Russia as co-organiser.