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Researchers at the HSE Centre for Language and Brain have developed a new digital tool for assessing children's phonological processing skills—the ZARYA (Sound Analysis of the Russian Language) test battery. It is the first standardised application in Russia designed to provide a fast and reliable assessment of children's ability to distinguish speech sounds, retain them in working memory, and perform phonemic analysis. The app runs on Android tablets and smartphones and is available for download from RuStore. Details of the test validation have been published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.

Psycholinguists from the Centre for Language and Brain at HSE University–St Petersburg have shown that words that are frequently misspelled are processed more slowly by readers, even when presented with the correct spelling. The researchers confirmed this effect for the first time using Russian-language materials and found that response speed is most strongly linked to how confidently individuals can distinguish the correct spelling of a word from an incorrect one. The study has been published in The Mental Lexicon.

Europium is a rare-earth metal responsible for the pure red glow in displays and other luminescent materials. For a long time, however, it refused to emit light when surrounded by certain organic molecules known as acylpyrazolone ligands. Chemists have now uncovered the reason: in europium complexes with these ligands, a 'black window' appears—a charge-transfer state in which the energy absorbed by the ligand is dissipated as heat rather than emitted as light. Understanding this mechanism opens the way to designing more efficient red-emitting materials for displays, fluorescent thermometers, and chemical sensors. The results have been published in Dalton Transactions.

The Innovation and Technology Management Conference (InnoTech 2026), organised by Elsevier publishing house in partnership with Tsinghua University, has taken place in Beijing. The event focused on the challenges of managing technological development in the age of artificial intelligence. Olesia Maibakh and Danil Yatskin, researchers from the International Research and Educational Foresight Centre at the HSEInstitute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK), presented the findings of the large-scale foresight study ‘IT in Russia: Development Scenarios’ conducted with the support of Yandex.

Chemists from HSE University have discovered a way to carry out a reductive addition reaction without using an external reducing agent. Instead, the required 'resource' is supplied by the aldehyde itself, one of the reaction participants. This approach helps prevent unwanted side reactions, reduces toxicity, and simplifies the production and synthesis of organic molecules, including those used in the manufacture of medicines. The study has been published in Journal of Catalysis.

In early June, the Science Republic initiative of the Centre for Student Academic Development presented popular science projects at the Science and Ice Cream Festival at VDNKh. On June 5, 13, and 14, HSE University ran an extensive programme of events, from lectures to intellectual games. The events took place at the BIOTECH Museum, Museum of Urban Economy of Moscow, and Smart City pavilions.

On June 19, graduates of the Bachelor's in Computational Social Sciences, launched in 2022, received their at the HSE University's Cultural Centre. All the graduates have completed in-depth training in a social science discipline while developing advanced competencies in data analysis and mathematical modelling.

A new permanent column, Key to the Text, prepared by the team of the School of Philological Sciences at the HSE Faculty of Humanities, has launched on the Arzamas media platform. The first instalment focuses on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot: the authors explore the evolution of the meaning of the word ‘idiot’ from antiquity to the nineteenth century and its central role in the writer’s conception of the novel.

The 10th Demo Day of the Joint HSE & VK Engineering and Mathematics School was held at the VK Moscow office. Students of the three workshops presented the results of 13 projects in the fields of artificial intelligence, information security, and digital platforms. Students worked on the development of recommendation services, systems for psycholinguistic text analysis and speech processing, methods for identifying celebrities in videos, algorithms for determining the toxicity of memes, security mechanisms for AI systems, and approaches to improving the effectiveness of neural network models.

Researchers from HSE MIEM and IPKON RAS have developed a new mathematical monitoring model that can identify the source of hazardous underground vibrations in real time. The technology could help reduce the risk of damage to buildings, roads, and other infrastructure located near quarries and mining sites. The paper has been published in Russian Mining Industry.