HSE University at VK Fest: A Journey into the Worlds of Technology, Design, and Space
HSE University will showcase cutting-edge innovations and educational opportunities at the anniversary edition of VK Fest 2025, Russia’s largest youth festival. Visitors can look forward to interactive workshops, VR exhibitions, AI-powered tech games, and even a chance to send a message into space.
VK Fest is the largest entertainment and music event in Russia, and this year marks its 10th edition. Its goal is to bring the social network into the real world for a summer’s day along with its most in-demand features: music, community pages, and content from popular bloggers. The festival merges fashion, technology, science, sport, entertainment, and more—everything that appeals to the younger generation.
This year’s celebrations will take place in St Petersburg, Kazan, the Sirius Educational Centre (Sochi), Chelyabinsk, and Moscow. The organisers promise a truly spectacular anniversary event with tailor-made programmes for each city and age group. The line-up includes performances by artists, quizzes, quests, shows, lectures, and a host of other activities. Guests will be able to take part in virtual gaming tournaments, watch exciting scientific experiments, pose for photos with cosplay characters, meet celebrities, and collect autographs.
The festival will run from morning till evening (and for two full days in Moscow and St Petersburg), so the organisers are setting up a food court with a wide range of food and drinks, along with a children’s area staffed by entertainers. HSE University will be represented at several venues throughout the festival. For instance, the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM) will host an AI-powered team game called Smile Detector, as well as a presentation of the Claw Engine game development platform.
‘HSE MIEM will take part in VK Fest in Moscow for the fourth time. This year’s event will be held on July 19–20 in Luzhniki Park. We will be presenting key student projects, including video technology, space research, and our own Claw Engine game platform. VK Fest is a brilliant stage for demonstrating how our young engineers transform ideas into real products and engage with a wider audience. I am confident that MIEM’s participation in VK Fest will once again highlight the strength of our project-based culture,’ said Ilya Semichasnov, Director of MIEM’s Project Management Centre.
The Smile Detector AI team game challenges players not to laugh while watching funny videos. A neural network, using footage from multiple cameras, tracks any signs of laughter or smiles. This technology, developed by HSE students, is already used in the filming of The Big Show. Festival visitors will try, like the neural net, to catch players in the act of smiling.
The Claw Engine presentation will be led by members of MIEM’s Game Engineering and Interactive Systems Studio. This generative AI game prototyping engine was fully developed at HSE and serves as a testbed for the university’s new Master’s programme in Digital Engineering for Computer Games. Visitors will be able to play demo games within the engine itself and tweak various gameplay elements for the next audience. Over the course of two days at VK Fest, the guests will, in effect, co-create their own game.
MIEM will also present a prototype model of HSE University’s CubeSX-HSE satellite, which has already been launched into Earth’s orbit. An interactive panel with real-time satellite data will allow visitors to track its current position live. Festival guests will also be invited to leave messages that will later be transmitted into space. In addition, there will be a workshop on assembling a 1U CubeSat miniature spacecraft, 3D-printed specially for the occasion, according to Dmitrii Abrameshin, Leading Engineer at MIEM’s Laboratory of Space Vehicles and Systems’ Functional Safety.
MIEM will also demonstrate software solutions developed through its project-based initiatives, including ‘Development of a Virtual Library of Spacecraft Using AR Technologies’ and ‘Virtual Space, Virtual Satellite.’
Students from the HSE Art and Design School, part of the Faculty of Creative Industries, have prepared a VR exhibition where festival visitors can explore 3D-modelled animations and illustrations designed for digital products and immerse themselves in these visual worlds through VR headsets. There will also be a hands-on workshop titled ‘Level Plasticity: How Location Tells a Story,’ where participants will use a level-building kit to create part of a game world—either an interior or an open diorama. The aim is to demonstrate how level design plasticity and spatial framing shape the final visual mood and convey atmosphere.
A special zone will be devoted to game design and interactive environments, explained Eleonora Ushakova, lecturer at the HSE Art and Design School. In her workshop, participants will learn to express emotion through angles, lighting, and composition by creating four unique shots of the same scene, each evoking a different emotional response.
Eleonora Ushakova
‘At the VR exhibition, we will be sharing interactive environments where guests will not just see our students’ best work—they will step inside their worlds and experience the subtleties of design from within. Come along to get inspired, create something new, and see how real game universes are born,’ she said.
The Faculty of Computer Science (FCS) will offer several educational and tech-themed activities, according to FCS event manager Anastasia Samoilova. A quiz titled ‘Human or AI?’ will challenge visitors to distinguish between human- and AI-generated texts, helping them sharpen their skills in an increasingly AI-rich world. Visitors can also take a career orientation quiz from the FCS Continuing Education Centre to help identify their path in the IT field. ‘This activity was hugely popular last year, so we decided to offer it again to help even more people figure out their direction,’ Anastasia Samoilova noted. Maths enthusiasts will be able to tackle real problems from the entrance exam for the FCS online Master's programme—a chance to test their knowledge and see which areas might need brushing up on. Guests will also be invited to write a message to their first-year self on a community board or leave encouraging words for those just starting university.
The festival will also feature a chill-out lounge hosted by IQ Media, a Jenga game from the HSE Olympiads group, and a performance by HSE’s cheerleading team. Guests can expect special giveaways and a whole host of positive vibes throughout the event.