Research & Expertise news at HSE University

Social Policy for Sustainable Development and Inclusive Economic Growth is one of HSE University's strategic projects. The project is aimed at translating scientific achievements into practical solutions for social and economic policy. HSE researchers and their partners have been actively involved in this work, and the first results have been obtained. In her interview with the HSE News Service, Vice Rector Lilia Ovcharova, Academic Supervisor of the project, spoke about what has been done so far.

Researchers from the HSE campus in Nizhny Novgorod, together with scientists from Australia and Japan, have built a model explaining the occurrence of abnormally high waves on the sea surface. Also known as rogue waves or killer waves, they often lead to accidents in the sea. The study findings are published in Physical Review Letters. The paper was selected as the Editor's Suggestion for its significance, novelty, and wide application. The research was financed by a megagrant from the Russian government as part of the 'Science and Universities' National Project and a grant from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR).

Changes related to the pandemic and the sanctions regime have led to the restructuring of the Russian information industry and changes in the policy strategy of its participants. What are the main risks and how best to cope with these new challenges? These issues were discussed during the ‘Digital Transformation of Business in the New Post-crisis Reality’ master class, organized by HSE Department of the Theory and Practice of Business-Government Interaction.

Idalia Fedotova, researcher at HSE University and the RAS Ivannikov Institute for System Programming, examined lexical differences across Khanty dialects and found that members of this relatively small ethnic group speak three distinct languages—rather than two, as previously thought. The findings are published in Ural-Altaic Studies.

A team of scientists from HSE University, the RAS Institute of Spectroscopy, and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology have developed a cold atom chip for devices with high accuracy of measurements. The researchers are currently working to create atomic clocks which could be used on spacecraft and the ISS. The paper has been published in Optics & Laser Technology.

As a result of the 2023 Teacher-Student Team Research Project  competition, the project ‘The Development of Automated Approaches to Identify the Aetiology of Cryptogenic Stroke with the Aim of Preventing Secondary Acute Cerebrovascular Accident’ has been created with funding from the HSE Academic Fund Programme. The project is led by Sofya Kulikova, Senior Research Fellow of the Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Empirical Studies (LINES).

Researchers from HSE University and the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry have developed a machine learning model that can predict the word about to be uttered by a subject based on their neural activity recorded with a small set of minimally invasive electrodes. The paper 'Speech decoding from a small set of spatially segregated minimally invasive intracranial EEG electrodes with a compact and interpretable neural network' has been published in the Journal of Neural Engineering. The research was financed by a grant from the Russian Government as part of the 'Science and Universities' National Project.

COVID-19 came as an unexpected challenge for humanity. Countries adopted different, sometimes diametrically opposed approaches to minimising the pandemic's impact: from hard lockdowns to no restrictions at all, as in Sweden. It was only last week that China began to relax its zero-tolerance policy. Researchers of the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences have identified a few factors which tend to have the greatest impact on the spread of COVID-19—in Russia, such factors include ambient humidity and temperatures, population mobility, the share of internal migrants in the local population, and household incomes. The study findings are published in Population and Economics.