Research & Expertise news at HSE University

The HSE Faculty of Law hosted an online meeting with law schools and expert centres from BRICS countries. The purpose of the event was to join efforts to advance legal science and practice for the benefit of the organization. To this end, at the initiative of the Dean of the Faculty of Law Vadim Vinogradov, a Consortium of BRICS Law Schools was established, comprising representatives of leading higher education institutions from a number of countries.

HSE scientists have developed an algorithm to protect digital images, significantly enhancing the security of multimedia data on the internet. The algorithm embeds watermarks into images; these watermarks are invisible to the human eye and capable of resisting various attacks. The results of the study have been published in Computers and Electrical Engineering.

Daria Gracheva, expert at the Institute of Education, turned to science in pursuit of methods to discern between a poorly constructed test and a well-designed one. In this interview with the HSE Young Scientists project, she discusses the '4K test,' which is intended to measure critical thinking and communication skills, shares insights on the model named after Georg Rasch, and explains how setting up an aquarium for a crab can help assess soft skills.

During his early years at university, physicist Ivan Makhov worried that he might be dismissed, but today he is heading a study supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation. In this interview with the HSE Young Scientists project, he shares his work experience using a closed-loop cryostat, his dream of conversing with Einstein, and favourite location in his hometown of St Petersburg.

On July 3–4, 2024, the IX BRICS Civil Forum was held in Moscow for the first time since the association was expanded by five new countries in January 2024. Participants emphasised the importance of personal interaction between public figures, civil activists, as well as the work they do to strengthen and enrich friendly relations between BRICS countries, based on mutual respect. The forum was organised by the BRICS Expert Council–Russia, which is established at the HSE University.

Scientists at the AI Research Centre and the AI and Digital Science Institute of the HSE Faculty of Computer Science applied classical reinforcement learning algorithms to train generative flow networks (GFlowNets). This enabled significant performance improvements in GFlowNets, which have been employed for three years in tackling the most complex scientific challenges at modelling, hypothesis generation, and experimental design stages. The results of their work achieved a top 5% ranking among publications at the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics AISTATS, held on May 2-4, 2024, in Valencia, Spain.

A meeting of the BRICS Coordination Committee on Antimonopoly Policy was held in Geneva as part of Russia's BRICS Chairship in 2024. The meeting participants supported a project to launch a BRICS Interstate Platform on Fair Competition, developed by the International BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre of HSE University and presented by the FAS of Russia as an initiative of the Russian Chairship.

Dmitry Ryabtsev, a 2024 graduate of the master's programme at the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, created an AI-powered software service for ophthalmology during his two years of study. This product is now entering the market, and its developer plans to participate in establishing a working group on software engineering for medical applications at the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, with the goal of promoting more genuinely useful domestic projects. In an interview with HSE News Service, Dr Ryabtsev shared his story of how a professional doctor turned into a programmer.