Research & Expertise

The HSE Faculty of Computer Science has launched the International Laboratory of Stochastic Algorithms and High-Dimensional Inference (HDI Lab). The Lab’s Academic Supervisor,Eric Moulines, and Chief Research Fellow, Vladimir Spokoiny, spoke to us about the fundamental and applied aspects of research performed by the laboratory, their relations with machine learning, and Russian-French academic ties.

The Higher School of Economics will become one of the government’s leading centres of expertise in the field of agricultural and ecological development, agrarian biotechnologies, rural areas, and the agroecological system as a whole. Additionally, the university will advise the government on methods for boosting agricultural exports and carrying out state regulatory reforms in waste management. This agreement was reached during a meeting between Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Gordeyev and the HSE researchers.

Due to differences in cultural traditions and social standards, people from various countries pursue different behaviour strategies in difficult situations. For example, some become introverted, while others seek other people’s help. Elena Chebotareva, a psychologist from HSE, compared the coping strategies used by French and Russian students, as well as their impact on psychological well-being.

On October 2, the HSE International Scientific-Educational Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research held a regular seminar from its Culture Matters series entitled ‘The scents of Christmas past – the relationship between memory and olfaction.’

Benchmark data and the standard of living in the regions of Russia affect student mobility, according to a study by HSE Centre for Institutional Studies researchers Ilya Prakhov and Maria Bocharova. Strong graduates from more educated and wealthy families are more likely to enrol in a university far from home, but the economy usually affects such a decision. High wages draw students towards the regions, while a high cost of living pushes them away.

Mathematicians at the Higher School of Economics have developed a model that explains how cell specialization arises in the context of resource constraints. The results are published in PLOS One journal. 

The National Research University Higher School of Economics and its Center for Historical Research are launching a new research project “Post-imperial diversities – majority-minority relations in the transition from empires to nation-states” (2018-2020). Funded in the framework of the ERA.Net RUS program, the project is implemented by the consortium of HSE - St. Petersburg, the University of Eastern Finland, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at the University of Goettingen. Its overall aim is to study the constitutional politics of ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity in the transition from empires to post-imperial arrangements following the Russian empire and the Soviet Union.

The First ICEF Conference in Applied Economics was held on September 15, 2018. It featured many accomplished scholars from all over the world who presented and discussed the most current topics of research, ranging from education economics to issues of socio-economic inequality as well as the most advanced methods in use by applied economists. The conference was ushered into existence to complement the already very successful International Moscow Finance Conference that ICEF is running every year and to raise the profile of HSE and ICEF in particular as a place where high end economic research is not only being produced but also well received.

On September 20-21, the Perm campus of the Higher School of Economics hosted the sixth International Conference on Applied Research in Economics (iCare6), an event that focuses on research with applications to and implications for real-life problems. The conference acronym reflects its motto: iCare = I care.

Demographers have created a detailed colour map of population ageing in European countries; a collection of demographic stories, it uses colour coding to indicate the varying stages of population ageing across Europe. By looking at the map, you can easily spot areas with a higher concentration of older people, countries with the youngest populations and the main destinations for workforce flows. The map's author Ilya Kashnitsky comments on some of the demographic stories it tells.