Research & Expertise

On September 1st, a new season of the open Student Research Paper Competition (SRPC) started. This competition is aimed at developing the potential of university students who are interested in academic activities. Students, as well as 2023 graduates of Russian and foreign universities, can submit their papers for the competition until October 15^th, 2023. This year SRPC turns 20 years old, throughout the competition’s history, Vadim Radaev, HSE University’s First Vice Rector, has been the chair of the organising committee. In today’s interview, he talks about the history of the competition and the key stages in its development.

Nikita Anisimov was appointed Rector of HSE University two years ago. In his interview with Ernest Mackevičius, Director of the HSE University Institute of Media, journalist, and television presenter, the HSE rector talks about how he came to the university, its achievements and development plans, and how to tell the difference between AI-produced and human texts.

Aleksey Kychkin, a researcher at the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Empirical Studies (LINES), and Oleg Gorshkov, a research assistant at LINES, received a patent for a system that predicts the spatial distribution of harmful substances in atmospheric air using an artificial intelligence unit. The invention can be used for integrated planning and notification of the risks of atmospheric air pollution by harmful substances. The work was carried out under a grant from the HSE University Artificial Intelligence Centre. The HSE News Service spoke with Aleksey Kychkin about the benefits of the new system, its application, and how it came to life.

The Ideas Centre for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research has announced the results of its 2023 competition. Five leading neuroscientists will receive grants to open graduate positions for early-career researchers who want to work on solutions to fundamental problems in this area. Three of the competition winners are scientists from HSE University: Matteo Feurra (HSE University in Moscow), Anastasia Kolmogorova (HSE University in St Petersburg), and Sofia Kulikova (HSE University in Perm).

This year, HSE University held the Mirror Laboratories project contest for the fourth time. A total of 19 applications were submitted to the contest from 16 HSE University research departments partnered with 16 organisations from 14 Russian regions. Following the contest results, 10 research projects received support.

Researchers at HSE University in Perm have used electroencephalography (EEG) to determine that consumers are willing to pay 10% more for chocolate when they know it to be a premium product. On the other hand, if consumers are aware that a chocolate product is inexpensive, their willingness to pay decreases by 13%. On average, men are willing to pay 8.8 monetary units more for chocolate than women, and men's willingness to pay decreases by 0.3 monetary units with each additional year of age. The study has been published in Food Quality and Preference.

The 8^th Russian Comics Conference ‘The World of Comics’, organised by the HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, took place online in March 2023. Over the two days of the conference, 44 comics researchers from Russia, France, China, and Malaysia presented their papers on comics history, narratives, visuals, and animation.

The 10th anniversary scientific conference ‘Neighbours in Research’ was held at HSE University in Perm. This year it received the status of an international event—research was presented by scientists not only from different regions of Russia, but also from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The conference's key concept is interdisciplinarity, and as a result, reports were presented from various branches of science, including economics, linguistics, sociology, law, digital technologies, and neuroscience.