Liudmila V. Mezentseva

HSE University in Nizhny recently hosted the 2nd Autumn Neuro-linguistic School ‘NeuroSciCom: Popularising Language and Brain Studies’ for scientists and students at the HSE Centre for Language and Brain Studies in Nizhny Novgorod. The school was held as part of the 'Human Brain Resilience: Neurocognitive Technologies for Adaptation, Learning, Development and Rehabilitation in a Changing Environment' Strategic Project of the Priority 2030 programme.

HSE University in Nizhny recently hosted the 2nd Autumn Neuro-linguistic School ‘NeuroSciCom: Popularising Language and Brain Studies’ for scientists and students at the HSE Centre for Language and Brain Studies in Nizhny Novgorod. The school was held as part of the 'Human Brain Resilience: Neurocognitive Technologies for Adaptation, Learning, Development and Rehabilitation in a Changing Environment' Strategic Project of the Priority 2030 programme.

On October 26, Zaryadye Concert Hall hosted an award ceremony to honour the winners of the 9th all-Russia prize 'For Loyalty to Science' awarded by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science for achievements in the fields of science journalism, education, and science communication. This year, two of HSE's projects were awarded.

In September, HSE University’s Voronovo Study Centre hosted ‘Scientarium: Young Researcher School’, a retreat for undergraduate and graduate students engaged in scientific activities. The Scientarium project started in 2021 in an online format, and was later held in the format of an educational retreat for the first time in autumn 2023. This year, the Young Researcher School brought together students from different universities across Russia.

In honour of HSE University’s 30^th anniversary in November 2022, the RT television channel made a documentary film called 2052: See the Future. The film is dedicated to the university’s research achievements and how they will change the world in the decades to come. The film was released this year in English and Arabic. The first festival screening of 2052: See the Future took place as part of the 7^th Gagarin.doc International Festival of Cinema, Science and Contemporary Art.

From the rise of platform capitalism to somatisation—this is the scope of the topics discussed at ‘Society’, a thematic platform of the NAUKA 0+ All-Russian Science Festival held by HSE University in October. In addition, experts discussed the timely issue of science popularisation.

HSE University held a round table devoted to science  documentaries. The participants discussed possible approaches to securing support for movie production and distribution, choosing topics of interest, and encouraging cinemas to show films about science.

On October 16, 2020, HSE University—winner of the Communication Laboratory 2019 Grand Prix—will host the 4th Russian Science Communication Forum. The Forum is held in partnership with the Association of Education and Science Communicators (AKSON).

Following a directive of the Rector, key HSE staff members have been awarded ‘Acknowledgement’ medals for their high professional achievements and devotion to work.

On 17th October the HSE School of Psychology is holding Welcome Lab Day as a continuation of the Nauka O+ festival. Head of School Vasily Klucharev talks to us about what will be on display, which areas of psychology are most popular today and whether it is possible to use brain stimulation to make people conform.

Psychologist and HSE graduate Daria Belostotskaya carries out research in gerontology — the science of ageing. She examines what orphans and the elderly have in common, why children and older people should talk to each other, and how art can help see the beauty of the old age. Daria spoke about her work in an interview with the HSE News Service.

HSE graduate Sergei Pronin was still studying for his degree in Software Engineering when he and others designed App in the Air, promoted by Apple as a successful mobile project. Sergei now works as the leading developer at Empatika and teaches at HSE. He talked to HSE News about trends in the app market, the unique Russian language course on developing iOS apps and about the principles of teaching in the IT sphere.

On 17th June in the Professors Hall at HSE Ilya Mochalov, second year Politics student at HSE and fourth year music student at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, gave a solo piano concert. Ilya has won a number of Russian and international prizes at music festivals and competitions. At the concert he played works by his favourite composer, Sergei Rakhmaninov.

HSE has hosted the international academic conference ‘Europe, 1945: Liberation, Occupation, Retribution,’ during which historians, sociologists, and culturologists from various countries discussed the social, economic, military, political, and cultural phenomena caused by World War II. In an interview with the HSE News Service, the Director of HSE’s International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences, Oleg Budnitskii, discusses the conference, its organizers, and its guests, and also talks about why it is important to study the human dimension of war.

Belgian economist Jacques-Francois Thisse is Academic Supervisor at the Center for Market Studies and Spatial Economics at HSE in Saint Petersburg. In an interview with HSE News Service he talked about why he likes Saint Petersburg, what fascinates him about Russia and how disillusion in Marxist ideas led him to studying market economies.

Every era builds its own version of the Middle Ages, and the modern age is no exception. Oleg Voskoboynikov, the youngest full professor at the Higher School of Economics, talks about the reason for the popularity of metaphors that refer to that era, why the ‘Suffering Middle Ages’ group on VKontakte [Russia’s largest social media site — Ed.] is not the same thing as medieval studies and how the desire to be different from everyone else can lead a student to study the Middle Ages.

On the eve of the new year we spoke to the head of the International Laboratory of Positive Psychology of Personality and Motivation, Dmitry Leontiev about why positive psychology does not solve problems but keeps them at bay, is uncertainty dangerous and why shouldn’t we battle with anxiety about the future.

This year winner of the respected Fields medal Andrey Okounkov became the new head of HSE’s International Laboratory of Representation Theory and Mathematical Physics. In an interview for the HSE News website, he talked about what is a good mathematical education, why mathematicians are more free than other academics and what to tell people who find figures difficult.

Research Fellow at the HSE’s Center of Education Quality Monitoring Dmitry Abbakumov, author of the ‘Theory and practice of computerized testing’ lecture course and developer of the ‘Adaptivity Guide’ software which makes it possible to adapt e-courses to students’ abilities. He recently gave a presentation about his research at The 2014 Computerized Adaptive Testing Summit at Princeton and at Edcrunch in Moscow. In his interview, he talks about why adaptive education is the future and how it is developing at HSE.