Representatives of HSE University among Winners of Znanie.Lecturer Competition
On February 5, 2025, the National Centre ‘Russia’ in Moscow hosted an awards ceremony for the winners of the fourth season of the All-Russian competition Znanie.Lecturer organised by the Russian Society Znanie (translated as Knowledge in English). The winners included 70 lecturers from 37 Russian regions. Representatives of HSE University were among the best of the best.
Among the winners were Maria Ryndyk, a first-year student of the Master's programme in Chemistry of Molecular Systems and Materials at HSE University in Moscow, and Liudmila Veselova, Academic Supervisor of the Master's programme in International Business in Asia-Pacific Region, Associate Professor at the Department of Strategic and International Management at the Graduate School of Business and the Department of Management at HSE University in St. Petersburg.
The latest season of the Znanie.Lecturer competition took place from April 23, 2024, to February 5, 2025, and attracted over 19,000 participants, including over 5,000 school students in a special nomination. In total, 140 of the strongest participants representing 52 regions of Russia made it to the finals of the competition. They had to go through a serious selection process—100 people per place. At the end of the competition, each winner received a grant of 250,000 rubles to create and promote their own educational content.
‘I was interested in performing for a wide audience, I wanted to share my knowledge and experience, to give people a good mood and joy during my speeches,’ Maria Ryndyk said about her participation in the competition. The competition consisted of seven stages. ‘For me, it was held in two cities—Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow. I gave seven offline lectures at schools of the Nizhny Novgorod region. In Moscow, several stages took place in online and offline formats. These were tests attended by members of the jury (expert commission), who evaluated our lecture presentations according to criteria such as creativity, contact with the audience, comprehensibility, and uniqueness,’ the student added.
Nearly all of Maria Ryndyk's talks are dedicated to the topic of regenerative medicine. She notes that the lectures ‘Robots are softer than we think: 4D printing in robotics and medicine’ and ‘Bones from space. Regenerative medicine in outer space’ were particularly successful. ‘At these lectures, I talked about how modern regenerative medicine and additive technologies help people cope with bone diseases not only on Earth, but also in outer space,’ the winner said.
Maria Ryndyk says that the share of winners from the total number of contestants was 0.5 per cent. ‘I wanted this victory very much, I would even say I dreamed about it. For me, winning meant not only understanding my scientific topic, but also being able to share the successes of other scientists with a wide audience in a way that makes science really attractive to people,’ the student said.
Liudmila Veselova has been involved in educational activities for many years, and she chose economics as the focus of her speeches in the Znanie.Lecturer competition. ‘It is important that in our time, when anyone, regardless of qualifications and knowledge, can speak on the Internet and publish pseudoscientific information, there are organisations such as the Znanie Society that try to raise the popular science format to a high level, engaging only proven experts,’ she explained. ‘I often agree to give open lectures for schools, libraries, and various organisations, it's important for me to share knowledge.’
All of Liudmila Veselova's lectures in the competition were practical talks on the specifics of doing business in China. In the final, she chose ‘Trends in consumer behaviour in China: from mania to awareness’ as the topic of her presentation.
‘I was very happy to be the winner, and, as the final was broadcast live, all my extended family and friends were able to share the joy of victory with me, which made the moment even more pleasant,’ said the winner. Liudmila Veselova also received a special prize from the Russian Media Group, namely a recording of podcasts on her topic on Russian Radio.
The awards were presented to the winners by Sergey Kravtsov, Minister of Education of the Russian Federation, Elena Yampolskaya, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation, Maxim Dreval, Director General of the Russian Society Znanie, and Baldan Tsydypov, Director of the Department for Patriotic Work of the Russian Society Znanie, who is also a captain of the armoured corps and Hero of the Russian Federation.