Society News at HSE University

Over the next ten years, Russia is expected to undertake a massive digitalization of its public services. The President has repeatedly talked about the need to actively implement artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analysis technologies. On January 11, the International Laboratory for Digital Transformation in Public Administration opened at the HSE Institute for Public Administration and Governance. Below, Laboratory Head Evgeny Styrin discusses what the implementation of digital resources means for citizens, how the government, society, and the business community are working together, and what some bad examples of digitalization are and how to fix them.

Light is a perfect medium according to Marshall McLuhan, who was the first to seek a deeper understanding of electronic communications. Modern media, however, have become the means not only for conveying facts but also for managing meanings — which is why the current agenda is shaped, to some extent, by the media. Dmitry Elovsky, Deputy Chief Editor at Dozhd TV and graduate of the Applied Politics programme at HSE, told Success Builder about the media’s strength as the so-called ‘fourth estate,’ how journalism is taught in the West, why working in Russian media is the province of the young and why the risk of ‘burnout’ is so great in this country.

The Master’s Programme Lawyer on the Global Financial Market began accepting students in 2018 and graduated its first class this year. Among them was Sberbank Chief Legal Advisor Irina Gridasova. In this interview with Success Builder, Ms Gridasova explains how to switch from political science to law without missing a beat, looks at gender stereotypes in the legal field and describes translating the clerical language of contracts into the language of living and breathing clients — a task all lawyers dread.

Foreign investment plays a huge role in determining how the Russian economy will recover after its long illness. The RDIF accompanies most of those transactions. But, as HSE graduate and RDIF Investment Department Vice President Mikhail Kireev explains, the organization also has a social mission, in particular, to develop medicines and vaccines. In this interview with Success Builder, Mr Kireev also explains why HSE graduates are sought after, how the RDIF chooses companies for investment, where you can get an international degree when borders are closed and what constitutes a global education.

HSE University’s Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology has held its traditional Christmas Film Seminar. This year it was dedicated to one of the most discussed films of the year — Steven Soderbergh's prophetic Contagion. A report from our news service explains how the 2011 Hollywood blockbuster managed to predict the events of 2020, which generation will be most affected by the pandemic, and why reality has become fiction.

Technology education is just one of the areas that the RAR and its head, Alisa Konyukhovskaya, are engaged in. Thanks to this association, we are gradually ceasing to anthropomorphize robotics and the West is learning more about Russian technologies and supporting the Russian market with investments. Here, Ms Konyukhovskaya tells Success Builder how a philosopher can find her calling in technology, who makes the rules for robots and why study at HSE to learn how to manage innovations.

The airspace is becoming increasingly accessible to humans, thanks in part to HSE University graduate Alexander Atamanov and his flying motorcycles and cars. A graduate of the HSE University Master’s Programme in Corporate Research, Development and Innovation Management, he is not only an inventor and engineer but also the successful director of several startups. In this interview with Success Builder, he explains how to save inventors from the patent bureaucracy, what the Moscow authorities think about unmanned flights over the capital and why inventors prefer to test their flying cars themselves.

Among the wide range of issues considered at the VII global conference on new educational technologies, EdCrunch On Demand, two topics were highlighted: the development of the education system during the pandemic and the further improvement of the competitiveness of Russian higher education. Conference participants concluded that the future of education lies in a combination of online and offline studies, that it is necessary to invest in different types of universities, and that universities will have to compete with start-ups and large corporations.