
An App for Talking to Trees and Other Projects by the Shukhov Lab
One of the Shukhov Lab’s most significant projects is its master’s programme in Prototyping Future Cities. Graduates of the programme told HSE University Life about innovations they have developed to help preserve the environment, promote balanced growth, and improve cities.

‘Whatever I’m Researching, I Want to Be Able to Put It into Practice’
Md Tahsir Ahmed Munna is a second-year master’s student in Data Science at HSE. He is also one of the international students nominated for HSE’s Silver Nestling Award in 2019. Munna’s master’s thesis focuses on knowledge graph-based recommender systems, and he works as a research assistant at HSE’s Laboratory for Models and Methods of Computational Pragmatics. HSE News Service spoke with Munna about studying Data Science at HSE, working on his thesis, and living in Moscow.

HSE ICEF Receives High Praise from University of London
The University of London (UoL) has completed the monitoring of the performance of Teaching Centres that operate under the Teaching Centres Recognition Framework. Upon consideration of the information gathered, the performance achieved by International College of Economics and Finance has been rated as excellent.

A Proud ‘No’: Why Egalitarian Values Don’t Catch on in Post-Soviet Countries
People’s values of personal choice, suсh as their attitudes towards abortion, divorce, and premarital sex, are usually determined their level of education, age, religiosity, and social status. At least this is the case in many countries such as the US and those in Europe. In a recent study, HSE sociologists found that in post-Soviet countries, personal values are most determined by people’s level of patriotism.

‘The More Consistent the Learning Process, the More We’ll See a Specifically Russian Type of Cluster-Based Economic Development’
On February 6, 2020, HSE University hosted an expert seminar, ‘Global and Russian Trends in Cluster Development and Regional Competitiveness’. The event was organized by the Russian Cluster Observatory based at HSE University’s Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK HSE). Keynote speaker Dr. Christian Ketels spoke about cluster policy and regional competitiveness in other parts of the world in order to further discussion about what form cluster policy should take in Russia.

HSE Ranks Among Top-3 Universities in Interfax Ranking for Public Administration Programmes
HSE University now ranks among the top 3 universities in Russia for its programmes in Public Administration. The ranking has been published by the Interfax National University Ranking research group.

Prospective Master’s Students in Business and Management Learn How to Promote Tourist Destinations
The Faculty of Business and Management recently held a research workshop for university students and graduates from CIS countries and various Russian cities, which attracted prospective students of the Experience Economy: Hospitality Management and Tourism master’s programme. The HSE University guests learned much about the role of events in the profession, and they had the opportunity to speak with programme teachers and tourism professionals.

Popularizing the Humanities vs. the Natural Sciences
Hearing about research advances in medicine, biology, or physics in public discourse is a common occurrence. However, the question of whether scholarly activity in the social sciences and the humanities should be popularized has always been left unanswered. What are the features of communication between humanities and society and the media? Are different fields of knowledge popularized differently? Physicists, linguists, sociologists, science communicators, and journalists discussed this question on the eve of the Day of Russian Science at the Total Dictation Conference in Moscow.

Build It and They Will Come
Migration, both domestic and abroad, is playing a major role in transforming the world’s largest cities, and Moscow is no exception. Researchers at HSE University, the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IGRAN) and Strelka KB identified which cities’ residents are buying newly built apartments in the capital and how economic inequality between Russia’s regions is changing the face of the city.

MIEM Seniors Present Their Projects at January Poster Session
In 2018, MIEM became HSE University’s first department to officially introduce project work to its curriculum. Students choose their projects in September and present them in poster form in January. The January poster session serves as an interim evaluation mechanism before student present their final versions of their projects before an expert jury in May and June.