News

As the pandemic continues and working from home becomes the norm in some industries, professionals who once left to work in other countries are beginning to return home. Researchers from HSE University, the Catholic University of Louvain and the University of Lille have found out how strong this movement could be and what economic, social and political implications it might bring. The preprint of the study was published in the GLO Discussion Papers.

Starting September 1, 2021, HSE University-Moscow is introducing new safety policies on campus to prevent the spread of COVID-19. They apply to students over 18 years old who have not had COVID during the last six months, have not been vaccinated (with a Russian or a foreign vaccine), nor have a medical exemption from vaccination. Free vaccination will be available on campus to all arriving students.

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. The event recedes ever further into the past, but the legacy of the trauma it caused endures. That stress produced trauma, and the trauma became part of Russia’s collective memory. Sociologists Yulia Belova, Margarita Muravitskaya and Nadezhda Melnikova of HSE’s Institute for Applied Political Research and Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology researched what this means for people who lived in the radioactively contaminated zone around the reactor and why the collective memory of the accident might disappear.

The ratios between the lengths of the second and fourth fingers, known as the 2D:4D ratio, are different in males and females, which is often explained by levels of androgens and oestrogens. However, an alternative theory states that men have bigger body parts, including fingers, which impacts the 2D:4D ratio. A research team including HSE University scholars refuted this hypothesis by collecting data on finger length from 7,500 people. The results of the study were published in Scientific Reports.

The winners of the third annual Ilya Segalovich Award were recently announced in Moscow. Established by Yandex, the award promotes the scientific endeavours of young researchers from Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan in the field of Computer Science. Among this year’s winners were three HSE students, including Alexander Grishin, a Doctoral student of the Big Data and Information Retrieval School of the HSE Faculty of Computer Science. Alexander spoke to us about his work, research challenges, and why he was surprised to receive the award.

Enrolment is underway for the HSE Institute of Education’s new Master's programme, Science of Learning and Assessment, which was developed at the intersection of developmental science, advanced methods of neuroscience and psychometrics, and the theory and practice of testing and measurement. Students will learn to assess human development and adjust the learning process, relying on evidence-based approaches of neuroscience and current concepts of measuring skills, personality characteristics, competencies, and other complex constructs.

Olga Vilkova, a PhD student of the HSE University's Faculty of Social Sciences, has proved that IT engineers face inequality and discrimination on the Russian online freelance market—websites offering jobs for self-employed people. The researcher analyzed the data on professional success of 54,000 IT engineers registered on the major Russian freelancing platform FL.ru. The research is published in the Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes Journal.

Ljiljana Filipović, from Croatia, is currenttly studying in the Master in International Management programme at the HSE Graduate School of Business. This year she was also helping international students with Russian language in 'Russian speaking club' organized by International Prep Year programme. In her interview, Ljiljana Filipović shares her experience of the Prep Year programme and offers some useful tips for international students.