HSE Researchers Take Part in Discussions at Eastern Economic Forum

Photo courtesy of Aleksandr Zholobov / Roscongress Foundation

The Eastern Economic Forum, currently taking place in Vladivostok, is addressing a wide range of issues, from the development of the Russian Far East and the Arctic to artificial intelligence. HSE University researchers took part in discussions, including those focused on attracting international professionals to Russia. Bilateral cooperation agreements were also signed.

HSE Assistant Professor Tarek Nabil Salim Farouni took part in the roundtable discussion ‘A Green Lane for Scientific Discoveries: How to Attract Foreign Scientists and Engineers to the Russian Far East.’ He spoke about his personal experience of moving to and working in Russia.

According to him, Russia is constantly changing for the better. ‘If you live here, you may not notice that Russia is getting better every year, but I can see these changes,’ he said. The researcher decided to continue his career in Russia because he has Russian roots and because of the country’s strong academic tradition. He says that moving to Russia was not difficult.

Dr Farouni received his PhD from Ohio University in 2017 and has worked at leading universities around the world, including Harvard University and ETH Zurich. He said that in summer 2026 he applied to the Time to Live in Russia programme, which helped him resolve immigration issues. The programme is designed to support and attract foreign professionals to work in Russia. Scientists, athletes, representatives of the creative industries, and entrepreneurs can move to Russia under the programme.

Photo courtesy of Evgeny Fedoskov / Roscongress Foundation

In spring 2026, Dr Farouni successfully passed the competitive selection process for the international academic career programme as part of HSE University’s international recruitment initiative and received an offer for a position as an Assistant Professor in the Big Data and Information Retrieval School at the Faculty of Computer Science.

‘I work at the Faculty of Computer Science at HSE University, at the intersection of statistics and bioinformatics. What is very important to me is that students in Russia receive very strong mathematical training. This is also evident at the international level: when you compare students, you can see that the strongest students come from Russia. This field is taken very seriously in the country,’ he said.

Vsevolod Zolotukhin

At the session ‘The Far East—A Pole of International Interaction’, Prof. Vsevolod Zolotukhin spoke about the university’s contribution to developing interfaith dialogue. The HSE Faculty of Humanities is, in terms of its scale, ‘equivalent to some universities,’ he noted, with more than 4,000 students, postgraduate students, and participants in continuing professional education programmes. It also brings together a wide range of humanities disciplines, including history, philosophy, philology, Asian studies, and foreign languages. The Faculty of Humanities has established a joint master’s programme with the SS Cyril and Methodius School of Post-Graduate and Doctoral Studies. The programme is important both for developing interfaith dialogue and for fostering dialogue between religious and non-religious people, as well as for promoting mutual understanding in the humanities more broadly, Vsevolod Zolotukhin believes.

Ildar Neverov, Irina Strelnikova

Photo courtesy of Arktikugol Trust Federal State Unitary Enterprise

As part of the Eastern Economic Forum, a cooperation agreement was also signed between the Arktikugol Trust and HSE University. The document was signed by Ildar Neverov, Director General of the trust, and Irina Strelnikova, Director of the HSE Centre for Interdisciplinary Arctic Studies.

The parties intend to cooperate in organising research projects, expert platforms, and other activities. The agreement provides for promoting research programmes within the academic community, developing student research activities in the field of international cooperation in the Arctic, training qualified professionals, and organising student placements and internships for postgraduate students and participants in continuing professional education programmes.