News

Diaries and letters are an invaluable resource for humanities scholars. But what can be done when the text is impossible to read? At the HSE Faculty of Humanities, this challenge has been translated into the language of mathematics: a team of philologists, historians, and machine learning specialists has created an information system that not only recognises illegible handwriting but also helps analyse archival content.

Researchers at the HSE Faculty of Computer Science benchmarked more than 200,000 model configurations for predicting financial asset prices and realised volatility, showing that performance can be improved by filtering out noise at specific frequencies in advance. This technique increased accuracy in 65% of cases. The authors also developed their own algorithm, which achieves accuracy comparable to that of the best models while requiring less computational power. The study has been published in Applied Soft Computing.

How can items be allocated among participants so that no one feels short-changed? Alexander Karpov, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, and his Singaporean colleague, Prof. Warut Suksompong, set out to find a mathematical answer to this question. In this interview, they discuss how a model of rational preferences is constructed, why one cannot rely on a simple sum of values, and where an algorithm that asks a minimal number of questions can be useful.

It was once believed that superconductivity and magnetism avoided each other like the devil avoids holy water. However, modern nanostructures prove the opposite. A Russian theoretical physicist and Indian experimentalists have joined forces to create the electronics of the future—free from energy losses. Nataliya Pugach, Professor at the School of Electronic Engineering at HSE MIEM and Leading Research Fellow at the Quantum Nanoelectronics Laboratory, explains how a long-standing acquaintance in Cambridge grew into a mirror laboratory project with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), how superconducting spintronics works, and what surprises a researcher in India beyond the university campus.

At the XXVI April International Academic Conference named after Evgeny Yasin at HSE University, one of the distinguished speakers was Prof. Liguo Li of the School of Education at Tsinghua University. He spoke about changes in the structure of higher education in China in line with national strategic priorities, including a proposed 1.7–2-fold increase in the number of leading research universities.

On April 20–21, the HSE School of Foreign Languages held the V International Scientific and Practical Conference ‘Languages. Education. Development’ (HSE LED). It was organised in an online format and dedicated to current trends in the development of modern knowledge in linguistics and pedagogy. Over two days, about 1,700 participants (including more than 220 speakers) took part in the event— 40% more than in the previous academic year.

How can states maintain governability and stability in a world where established rules are rapidly losing their force? Prof. Ali Farazmand of Florida Atlantic University answered this question in a presentation delivered at the XXVI April International Academic Conference named after Evgeny Yasin. The scholar proposed examining the transformation of the global order through the lens of two ‘mega-shifts’—from the rise of global corporate capitalism to the emerging multipolarity of today—and demonstrated why this transition between eras requires fundamentally new approaches to governance.

Interdisciplinary research is a defining feature of modern science, and this trend is especially pronounced in the field of quantum technologies. Physics, chemistry, mathematics, and biology form the core fields of research at the Centre for Quantum Metamaterials of the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM). Prof. Alexei Vagov, director of the centre, discusses its key activities, which focus on exploring the prospects of creating materials with predefined properties through manipulating their structure at the quantum level.

Experts from the HSE Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge have examined industrial PhD programmes across 19 countries worldwide. The analysis shows that the key components of an effective model include co-funding by universities, industry, and government; dual academic supervision; and flexible intellectual property arrangements. The findings have been published in Foresight and STI Governance.

Why simulate an auction? How do experiments in economics differ from those in psychology? Assistant Professor Alexander Usvitskiy, Head of the Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Finance, discusses the laboratory's activities and research approaches.