Research & Expertise news at HSE University

'Intelligence is ten million rules,' said Douglas Lenat, one of the creators of artificial intelligence (AI). For nearly four decades, he worked to instil 'common sense' in computers, painstakingly describing hundreds of thousands of concepts and millions of relationships between them.

The Russian economy has suffered due to sanctions, but has also adapted and begun to grow, compensating for last year’s losses. Mikhail Zadornov, Russia’s former Minister of Finance and member of HSE University’s Supervisory Council, spoke to students of HSE University’s International College of Economics and Finance (ICEF) about the economic situation in the country and the development of the financial sector in the new environment. The event was moderated by HSE University President and Head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) Alexander Shokhin. The lecture was the continuation of a series of meetings among well-known Russian practical economists and entrepreneurs and ICEF students.

Researchers from HSE University and the Russian Ministry of Health National Medical Research Radiological Centre have successfully generated a three-dimensional laboratory model of prostate cancer and used the model for testing an anti-tumour drug. In the future, this approach has the potential to significantly enhance the efficacy of cancer treatment for patients. The study’s findings have been published in Cancer Urology.

A team of researchers from HSE University and the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (AIRI) have demonstrated the effectiveness of the PSIICOS method they had previously developed for non-invasive mapping the neural networks in the brain based on its electrical activity. Unlike other methods, it does not search for individual neuronal sources to be then combined into networks but instead looks directly for the functional networks of interconnected neuronal populations—and does so swiftly and accurately. The study findings have been published in NeuroImage.

Today, neural networks can easily identify emotions in texts, photos and videos. The next step is modelling them—an essential component of full-fledged intelligence in people and machines alike.

Vadim Mykolaenko is able to stay up working until late at night and then go for a run at seven in the morning—he gets so much energy from his life as a young HSE University scientist. In this interview with the Young Scientists project, Mr. Mykolaenko spoke about his subject area, his attitude to grades, and his love for music and cycling.

The history of the invention of telephony reads like a captivating detective novel, but even more intriguing are the events that contributed to the worldwide adoption of this technology. In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The fourth episode of the series recounts the story of the fledgling start-up's confrontation with hordes of patent trolls and its subsequent victory in a full-blown corporate war against the largest telecommunications company of the late 19th century.

Researchers from HSE, MIPT, and the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Solid State Physics, jointly with colleagues from the UK, Switzerland, and China, have conducted a study on the characteristics of thin films composed of platinum and niobium. Both the experiments and the theoretical calculations have confirmed that when in contact with a superconductor, platinum exhibits a spin, creating a potential for its effective use for data transmission. Platinum atoms have no magnetic moment, paving the way for the development of even smaller chips utilising this novel structure compared to conventional spintronics. The paper has been published in Nature Communications.