HSE University Receives Highest Grant under Priority 2030 Programme

© HSE University

HSE University has proved its leading position in the first group of the ‘Research Leadership’ field under the Priority 2030 programme. The university has also received the highest grant for teaching digital competencies to students, demonstrating its educational leadership in the fields of digital technologies and AI.

Sergey Roshchin

HSE University Vice Rector

‘Since 2017, HSE University has been continually developing its concept for the comprehensive teaching of digital and big data competencies to students across all educational programmes and fields. This produces results and lays the foundation of HSE University’s leadership in education in the field of AI. It will also allow us to further develop AI tools and work with big data in relation to various subject areas.’

With support from the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Digital Development, the Data Culture Project—now a required subject for all HSE University students—has been integrated into the ‘Digital Department’ project of the Priority 2030 programme since 2022.

Students in all fields learn methods and tools for analysing big data in order to solve professional tasks. Representatives of leading Russian digital companies are involved in independently assessing the development of comprehensive digital skills.

Evgeny Sokolov

Head of the HSE University Big Data and Information Retrieval School and the Digital Department project

‘Today, Data Culture is a large system; every year, we attract more than a hundred teachers and assistants, develop new methodological materials, create online courses, and work with academic supervisors to develop new opportunities for students through courses and projects. Our teachers include developers and analysts from major IT companies, and our graduates are actively involved in the project. Without doubt, Data Culture is the foundation that has allowed us to take a leading position in teaching digital skills to students.

And this is only the start of the journey. There is a qualitative shift underway in the field of AI in relation to the emergence of large generative models and the growth in the amount of data available in many fields. Moden AI methods are largely rough around the edges and difficult to use. There are often no simple or easy-to-use tools, but we must still provide students of all fields with the skills to implement AI in their work. We are already designing and implementing courses on adapting neural network methods for applied tasks. In the near future, we will strengthen the project component of learning: every student must be able to demonstrate their digital competencies by completing a project using modern machine learning and AI methods. We believe that AI is an important tool which will transform many professions and processes, and our students will certainly be able to lead this transformation.’

HSE University is open to cooperation with other universities. The university’s educational IT module can be implemented not only within HSE double-degree programmes, but also independently in a hybrid or fully online format. The model developed at HSE University to integrate the digital competencies module into main educational programmes allows students in any field to attain digital competencies.