Education

HSE has once again climbed the THE World University Ranking and entered the 301 – 350 range, taking 3rd place in Russia after MSU (199) and MIPT (251-300). HSE first appeared in this ranking two years ago and every subsequent year the university has consistently improved its standing.

On September 2-7, one of the world’s most prestigious programming competitions – the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) – took place in the Japanese city of Tsukuba. Three students from the HSE Faculty of Computer Science took home medals.

The second Summer School on Deep Learning and Bayesian Methods was held in Moscow from August 27 to September 1, this year in English. During 6 days participants were studying and implementing Bayesian methods in neural networks, exchanging their experience and discussing research ideas.

The high quality of HSE’s Bachelor programme has been recognised by experts on the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), the headquarters of which are located in the U.S. For more than 85 years, ABET has been accrediting college and university programmes in the applied and natural sciences, computing, engineering and engineering technology. HSE’s Software Engineering programme is the only one in Russia to have received this accreditation.

The Higher School of Economics has entered the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) for the first time. The ranking is known for its strict selection criteria. This year, 12 Russian universities, including 10 participants of Project 5-100, entered the ranking. Until 2016, only 2 representatives of Russia were included- MSU and St. Petersburg State University.

Last year, Vadim Drobinin graduated from the bachelor programme ‘Software Engineering’. Now, he works in London for an ambitious startup which promises to revolutionise the common internet search. Not the stereotype of the introverted programmer who writes code all night long, Vadim travels frequently, writes a recipe blog, teaches, and gives presentations at conferences all around the world.

Attracted by the famous mathematical education in Russia, Alfredo Alejandro De la Fuente Briceño decided to travel halfway around the world to enrol in HSE’s Master’s Programme in Statistical Learning Theory, a new joint programme between HSE and Skoltech aimed at training the next generation of scientists to carry out fundamental research and work on challenging new problems in statistical learning theory. After completing his Bachelor’s degree in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering at the National University of Engineering in Lima, Peru, the 25-year-old was encouraged by several professors and friends to try a programme in a different language and tradition and step outside his comfort zone.

On April 4, the winners of the First International Data Analysis Olympiad (IDAO) were announced. The event was organized by the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, Yandex, and Harbour.Space University (Barcelona) with the support of Sberbank. Magic City team from St. Petersburg took out first prize, a team from the Ukraine came second, and the Apex team from Belarus came third.

From late March and early April, HSE will offer four new coursers on Coursera  on intercultural communication, machine learning, computer vision, and stochastic processes.

Evgenia Okopnaya, a first year student in Applied Mathematics and Information Science at HSE, together with her peers, Aliya Khasanova and Diana Zagidullina, recently participated in the START Hack Hackathon at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. START Hack is a programing competition which attracts over 350 students, young entrepreneurs and programmers annually. Participants try to solve tasks set by big companies. Evgenia Okopnaya shared her impressions of the event.