HSE Doctoral Student Receives Young Scholar Paper Award
The Society for Social Choice and Welfare (SSCW) has granted the Young Scholar Paper Award to Angelina Iudina, doctoral student and lecturer at the Department of Mathematics of the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences and Junior Research Fellow at the HSE International Centre of Decision Choice and Analysis. The scientists highlighted her article devoted to solving the problem of choosing the best alternatives based on the results of pairwise comparisons.
The SSCW unites experts in the field of collective choice theory and public welfare economics. Every two years, the society holds an international interdisciplinary conference, which brings together economists, mathematicians, political scientists, computer scientists, and other researchers. Since 2024, the Young Scholar Paper Award has been granted for outstanding scientific papers prepared by prospective researchers and presented at the conference sections.
At the 18th SSCW meeting, held on June 12–16, 2026, in Tokyo, the award was given to Angelina Iudina's paper ‘Extensions of the Uncovered-Set-Related Rules for Stable Choice Based on Non-Transitive Preferences: Axiomatic Analysis.’
The article is dedicated to the analysis of procedures for choosing the best alternatives based on the results of their pairwise comparisons in situations of non-transitive preferences that allow for the equivalence of individual alternatives. The paper proposes new selection procedures, analyses their properties, and determines advantages over existing solutions. The results obtained by Angelina Iudina expand the set of mathematically sound decision-making methods in such conditions.
‘When making decisions, people often turn to various rankings. For example, applicants take into account university rankings when choosing a place of study, and when evaluating research staff productivity, they consider rankings of academic journals based on their bibliometric indicators,’ says Angelina Iudina about the practical application of her research. ‘The problem is that there are many rankings and they are created using different methodologies, which is why they barely align with each other.’
In such cases, the proposed solutions can be used as aggregation procedures to build a unified ranking of alternatives based on initial conflicting rankings.
‘It’s worth noting that not all selection procedures are equally good for such tasks. The properties studied in the work serve as criteria for their quality,’ notes Angelina Iudina. Meeting these properties ensures predictable and consistent behaviour of the final ranking when the set of alternatives or their position in the initial rankings changes, she adds.
‘Participating in such a large-scale conference is a great honour and a rare opportunity to personally communicate with scientists whose activity I have been following for many years. The award was a pleasant surprise for me and a valuable sign of support and recognition from the professional community,’ shares Angelina.
Fuad Aleskerov
‘The participation of students and doctoral students in serious conferences is a very important element of education and research work,’ says Fuad Aleskerov, HSE University Distinguished Professor. ‘I always advise my students to participate in major conferences; I compare it to dancers participating in serious ballet competitions. Experts will ask, prompt, and offer you new ideas. I congratulate Angelina on her award. This is a world-class conference in collective choice, and I am pleased that our work plays a crucial role in this field of science,’ he said.
