Research & Expertise

From January 21 – 22, 2017, an international seminar ‘The Syrian and Middle East Regional Order: Russian, Syrian, and Turkish Perspectives’ took place in St. Petersburg and involved Russian, Turkish, and Syrian experts on the Middle East. The event was organized by the HSE Laboratory for Monitoring the Risks of Socio-Political Destabilization and the Department of Asian and African Studies at HSE in St. Petersburg, together with two leading Middle Eastern research centers: the OMRAN Center for Strategic Studies in Istanbul and the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM) in Ankara. This was the second time the three countries’ experts had met in this format, since last year’s meeting in Istanbul.

Structure and Dynamics of α-hairpinin Peptide Tk-hefu2 in Water: Computer Simulations, an article in which HSE researchers make discoveries relevant to a variety of fields, including mathematics, information science, physics, and biology, opens up new opportunities for medicines to arise that regulate the function of potassium channels that ensure the vital functioning of human cells.

Researchers from the HSE Institute of Education have adapted and begun using an assessment tool for comparing the knowledge and skills of children starting school. Their first results were obtained from a sample of children starting school in Russia and the UK.

For perfectionists, sleep quality is often far from perfect. However, perfectionism per se seems to be just part of the story; another important factor is a perfectionists' tendency to experience frequent symptoms of anxiety, sometimes for relatively minor reasons. These are the findings made by a team of Russian and UK sleep researchers, published in the January 2017 issue of Personality and Individual Differences journal.

2016 marked 125 years since the birth of Osip Mandelstam. Pavel Polian (Nerler), Director of the Mandelstam Centre, summarized the results of its years’ work

This issue Computer Science: History of Emerging Discipline is dedicated to contemporary computer science education in Russia.

On December 23, 2016, the HSE Academic Council approved the creation of four new laboratories: the International Laboratory for the Study of Russian and European Intellectual Dialogue, the International Laboratory for Population and Health Studies, the International Laboratory of Deep Learning and Bayesian Methods, and the International Laboratory for Supercomputer Atomistic Modelling and Multi-scale Analysis.

Sometimes the researchers’ findings might seem unusual. IQ.hse.ru publishes a compilation of the most unexpected results of the research carried out by HSE faculty or presented at HSE conferences in 2016.

On the eve of New Year’s, it is customary to take a look into the near future. We asked HSE experts in various fields to share their forecasts on which areas of research might be the most interesting and promising in 2017. They tell us about what discoveries and breakthroughs await us in 2017, as well as how this could even change our lives.

The new academic journal is entitled ‘Urban Studies and Practices’. The first issue came out this September.  Now a call for papers for special issue on Migrants and the City has been announced. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2017.