HSE ‘Mirror Laboratories’ Project Marks Five Years since Start
‘Mirror Laboratories’ is one of the flagship programmes of the HSE University aimed at developing domestic scientific partnerships. During the implementation of the project, 41 research projects were initiated in partnership with 30 regional universities and scientific organisations. A series of round tables timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the ‘Mirror Laboratories’ project, were held at the HSE University on April 24–25, 2024.
The programme started at HSE University in the spring of 2020. For the first time, the university initiated cooperation aimed at developing domestic scientific collaborations, increasing the effectiveness of interaction in the research and educational fields between HSE University and research teams from other regions of Russia.
The ‘Mirror Laboratories’ project is based on the principle of parity and mirror financing (both partners allocate equal amounts to the project). It brings together research resources of the participants, including access to equipment and data. It also allows for the exchange methods and scientific results, seminars and internships. In addition, the involvement of young researchers, students and doctoral students in the project is an essential feature.
Director of Advanced Research at HSE University
‘The fifth anniversary is a timeframe, with which we can sum up the first results of the “Mirror Laboratories” project. The development of domestic collaborations is an important component in the implementation of the university's strategy. The “Mirror Laboratories” project has become a good driver for the expansion of not only basic, but also applied research. We are currently holding the fifth competition to launch new projects, and the interest from both our university research projects and our partners is increasing. It’s nice to note that the project has permanent partners who implement projects in several directions at once.’
Permanent partners of the Mirror Laboratories project:
- Southern Federal University
- Ufa University of Science and Technology
- Tomsk State University
- Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University
At HSE University, the Faculty of Social Sciences and HSE campus in St Petersburg are the leaders in project engagement. ‘We are very grateful to our colleagues for their active participation and support,’ said Marina Litvintseva.
Currently, ‘Mirror Laboratories’ projects are being implemented in various fields of science: mathematics, computer science, nanoelectronics, electrical engineering, physics, economics, sociology, linguistics, education, psychology, and modern history.
Several projects initiated in the framework of the ‘Mirror Laboratories’ feature practical application. These range from the development and application of machine intelligence methods for searching and creating new materials to the study of scenarios for the social inclusion of regional youth in educational migration, from the development of machine learning technology in predicting the outcomes of acute coronary syndrome to the development of a hardware and software package for testing and implementing psychological methods for controlling a person's emotional status.
‘An important result of the “Mirror Laboratories” was access to interdisciplinary research by our mathematicians from HSE University in Nizhny Novgorod and our colleagues from the Faculty of Computer Science,’ noted Marina Litvintseva.
The ‘Mirror Laboratories’ project is an additional tool for involving students in research: 682 students and 234 adult researchers participated in projects over five years. In the last two years, students have become co-authors of 22 publications.
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Over the five years since the project’s implementation:
161 papers were published
237 joint internships were conducted
60 different databases were created
As part of the project’s fifth anniversary, round tables were held on April 24–25 at the HSE University building on Pokrovsky Bulvar, where the most significant results and achievements of joint research by teams from HSE and partner organisations were presented.
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