HSE and Sichuan University Sign Cooperation Agreement
On May 20, 2025, HSE University hosted an official delegation from Sichuan University headed by President Wang Jinsong. During the meeting, the universities signed a cooperation agreement.
The participants discussed key areas of partnership, including the launch of a double-degree programme in Eurasian studies, as well as potential cooperation in the fields of international relations, mathematics, teaching, Russian as a foreign language, and academic mobility.
The meeting was attended by representatives of Sichuan University and HSE in various subject areas: the faculties of World Economy and International Affairs, Mathematics, Humanities, the Institute of Education, and others.
The discussions took place in a constructive atmosphere. The parties confirmed their mutual interest in developing cooperation and stressed the need to begin substantively implementing the agreements reached.
HSE Vice Rector and Head of the BRICS Expert Council–Russia Victoria Panova highlighted the prestigious international status of Sichuan University, one of the oldest universities in Southwestern China, and underscored the symbolism of the meeting in light of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow. As part of that visit, 28 bilaterial agreements were signed, three of which were between HSE and leading Chinese universities.
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‘It Is a Great Honour for Us to Be Partners’
In late March 2026, an official meeting took place between a delegation from HSE University and delegations from Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU); the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; and the Embassy of Vietnam in the Russian Federation. The participants discussed key areas of cooperation that will help strengthen ties not only between the universities, but also between the two countries.
‘HSE Offers a Lot, Not Just Academically, but Also in Terms of Community and Unexpected Opportunities’
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How the Brain Processes a Word: HSE Researchers Compare Reading Routes in Adults and Children
Researchers from the HSE Center for Language and Brain used magnetoencephalography to study how the brains of adults and children respond to words during reading. They showed that in children the brain takes longer to process words that are frequently used in everyday speech, while rare words and pseudowords are processed in the same way—slowly and in parts. With age, the system is reorganised: high-frequency words shift to a fast route, whereas new letter combinations are still analysed slowly. The study was published in the journal Psychophysiology.
How Neural Networks Detect and Interpret Wordplay: New Insights from HSE Researchers
An international team including researchers from the HSE Faculty of Computer Science has presented KoWit-24, an annotated dataset of 2,700 Russian-language Kommersant news headlines containing wordplay. The dataset enables an assessment of how artificial intelligence detects and interprets wordplay. Experiments with five large language models show that even advanced systems still make mistakes, and that interpreting wordplay is more challenging for them than detecting it. The results were presented at the RANLP conference; the paper is available on Arxiv.org, and the dataset and the code for reproducing the experiments are available on GitHub.
HSE Holds Exams, Quizzes, and Selection Rounds for School Students in Tashkent and Bishkek
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BRICS International School Held in Delhi
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HSE Researchers Experimentally Demonstrate Positive Effects of Urban Parks on the Brain
Scientists at HSE University have investigated the effect of parks on the cognitive and emotional resources of city dwellers. The researchers compared brain electrical activity in 30 participants while they watched videos of walks through parks and along busy highways. The results showed that green urban environments with trees produce a consistent effect across individuals, helping the brain calm down and relax. By contrast, walks along busy streets were found to be distracting. The findings have been published in Scientific Reports.
‘The Identity of a Political Community Is Not Fixed—It Is Continuously Constructed and Contested’
Wang Yali has been interested in Russian language and politics since her time as an undergraduate at Peking University. After graduating with a degree in Asian and African Languages and Literatures and a second degree in International Relations, she pursued a Master’s in International Relations at the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at HSE University–Moscow. She is now pursuing a PhD at the Doctoral School of Political Science, examining Russian narratives of ‘East,’ ‘West,’ and its own place among them.
HSE to Launch Laboratories in Space Research and Nanoelectronics with One of India’s Top Universities
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HSE Scholars to Join Sino-Russian Association of Fundamental Sciences
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