News

In 2010, HSE University launched the Full-time Advanced Doctoral Programme, an innovative programme for doctoral students at that time. At the beginning of 2021, an alumna of the programme’s first cohort became the first programme graduate to earn her Doctor of Sciences degree: Elena Vakulenko, Assistant Professor at HSE University’s Faculty of Economic Sciences. In an interview with HSE News Service, the professor discussed her academic career.

Using transcranial magnetic stimulation, Russians scientists were able to precisely track inter-muscle interactions between cortical representations of arm muscles. In the future, this method will help track brain changes in patients with motor disorders. The study was published in Human Brain Mapping. The project was supported by the Presidential Programme of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF).

In Russia, 2021 was declared the Year of Science and Technology. HSE has always paid special attention to the development of science, and more than 40 international laboratories have played an important role in the development of the university as a world research centre. One of the University’s first such laboratories was theRonald F. Inglehart Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR), named after its academic supervisor at the time, American sociologist and political scientist Ronald Inglehart. HSE News Service spoke with LCSR Laboratory Head and professor of sociology Eduard Ponarin (HSE – St. Petersburg) about the Laboratory’s work over the past decade.

What is urban planning? What is the ‘stranger effect’ and why do we need a multidisciplinary approach in education? School Head and Associate Professor Kirill Puzanov spoke with the News Service about what students learn and how in the Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism, which celebrates its 10^th anniversary this year.

During the pandemic, countries have endeavoured to protect their citizens without hurting their economies with excessive restrictions. At the seminar ‘Living with Covid-19: Optimal Lockdown Policies’, Hubert Kempf, academic supervisor of HSE University’s International Laboratory for Macroeconomic Analysis, presented a mathematical model that can be used to calculate the optimal level of restrictions.  

Many national governments have responded to the sharp rise in poverty during the pandemic with new social support programmes, including direct cash payments. During a joint seminar between the HSE Institute for Social Policy and the World Bank held as part of work conducted by the Human Capital Multidisciplinary Research Centre,experts discussed approaches that have been implemented abroad and the prospects of a minimum guaranteed income in Russia.

Researchers Mario Guarracino from the HSE Laboratory of Algorithms and Technologies for Networks Analysis in Nizhny Novgorod and Julius Žilinskas and Algirdas Lančinskas from Vilnius University, have proposed a new method of testing for COVID-19. This group method allows results to be obtained 13 times faster as compared to individual testing of each sample. The research paper was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Monica Spychala (USA) is a double-degree Master's student at Technische Universität Berlin and HSE University’s Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK), where she studies Governance of Science, Technology and Innovation. Monica spoke with HSE News Service about why she chose HSE, what it is like to study remotely in the Governance of STI programme, and how she is already putting her knowledge into practice.