Campus news at HSE University

HSE University Student Development Office held its traditional Charity Xmas festival from December 1th to 5th. The event was open to HSE University students, staff and graduates, and anybody else who wished to attend. This year for the first time, it was online, but nonetheless brought together a large number of guests and speakers. The HSE News Service spoke about volunteering and charity in the Coronavirus era.

Aleksey Maslov, Professor at HSE University’s School of Asian Studies and one of its founders, has become a super-media persona this year. This is due to major interest in China amid the pandemic and Beijing’s strained relationship with Washington. In the column ‘HSE University Scientists’, Aleksey Maslov explains how to keep up with everything (spoiler: Shaolin Monastery!), why Russian science has become a ‘fossil’, what scientists should do for self-promotion and why it’s important to look good at the same time.

HSE University together with the mobile network operator company MTS have launched a 360° live streaming system that supports VR format for remotely taught courses. HSE students can now attend lectures online both in regular format and, for the first time in Russia, in augmented reality format. Six lecture halls on HSE’s Moscow campus are now equipped with 360° panoramic video cameras and auto tracking cameras that follow the instructor’s movement in the classroom.

Isak Froumin, Head of the HSE Institute of Education, has been elected a fellow of the International Academy of Education (IAE). Until now, its fellows had included only one scholar from Russia – Andrey Podolsky, formerly a department head at Moscow State University, and today, an HSE professor and department head at Innopraktika.

The HSE Faculty of Computer Science (FCS) and Yandex held the Online Final of the IDAO-2020 International Data Analysis Olympiad, which took place for the third time. The task for the final round was provided by QIWI, the platinum partner of the event. Sberbank also became a competition partner.

How can we achieve balanced growth of the global economy? What is a human-centred approach for economic growth? How can we measure the contribution of corporations to sustainable development? On December 1- 2, visionaries of sustainable development — more than 50 international experts from 23 countries, including representatives of government organizations and businesses, non-profit organizations, and civil society activists — will answer these questions at the Global Impact Conference.

Ramin Babaev is in his second year of the Master's programme in Law of International Trade, Finance and Economic Integration. He came to Moscow from Baku, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Jurisprudence at the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Ramin shared his impressions of life and academics in Moscow with the HSE News Service.

How the pandemic has affected the global system of higher education, how the system will betransformed and what prospects there are for cooperation between Russian and European universities– these were among the issues discussed by representatives of HSE University and other universities, experts and officials at the digital Round Table ‘EU— Russia: New Models of Educational Process Organisation, Novel Education Practices and Internationalisation in the Post-COVID Reality’.