HSE University to Present Its Projects at the International Youth Festival
The International Youth Festival (IYF) will be held in Yekaterinburg from 11 to 17 September 2026. HSE University will take an active part in the event. The university's booth will present a space settlement mock-up, robots, and the iFORA big data analysis system. Fifty HSE students will visit festival venues, and experts will participate in the business programme.
HSE University is presenting its booth at the International Youth Festival for the first time. It is located in the Human Development exhibition space, organised by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.
The interactive exhibition area ‘Explore and Dream’ will be available at the booth. It is centred on a space settlement mock-up, which is planned to be built at the Skolkovo Innovation Centre in 2026 to host the first International Space Games (ISG). The games will be held as part of the federal project ‘Personnel for Space’ of the national project ‘Cosmos,’ coordinated by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Roscosmos State Corporation. HSE University will have the honour of operating the ISG.
The Robotics Laboratory of the HSE Faculty of Computer Science is also displaying its developments at the booth —a robotic arm, a robotic cargo platform, and a 3D printer. In addition, HSE University is demonstrating the intelligent big data mining system iFORA—a modern strategic analytics tool developed at HSE University to process and organise arrays of unstructured data, determine hidden connections, and identify specialised insights, trends, and atypical patterns to predict the future. The system is based on the university’s own language model, iFORA.LLM.
University experts will join panel sessions, and students will take part in numerous festival venues. In particular, they will present the Rediscovering Russia and Gosvyshka projects.
On September 13, Ivan Gruzdev, Director for Internal Monitoring and Student Academic Development at HSE University will moderate the session ‘AI and Humans: Technology, Labour Market, and the Future of Youth.’ The following day, HSE Vice President Dmitry Zemtsov will lead a session, ‘Value-shaping Projects: Student Experiences and Attitudes of Young People in Russia and the World.’
Vice President at HSE University
‘The International Youth Festival is a landmark event for Russia. Our country demonstrates unprecedented openness and willingness to unite talents in an effort to change the world for the better. Thousands of young people will gather in Yekaterinburg to exchange ideas, impressions, establish contact, and implement projects. This approach is in line with HSE University’s strategic development goals, which is why the university, our students, and experts take an active part in IYF 2026. We invite everyone to visit our booth and join our discussion sessions.’
Senior Director at HSE University
‘This year, for the first time, HSE University will participate in the exhibition part of the International Youth Festival. Our booth is a precise reflection of the interactive exhibition area name— ‘Explore and Dream.’ We will show a dream—a dream about space, about space settlements, and projects in robotics and big data. Technologies of the future are the key priority areas of development for the university. Participation in large-scale projects such as the International Youth Festival is an opportunity to reach a global audience and communicate directly with those who will soon determine our future.’
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