Research & Expertise

Researchers from the Centre for Language and Brain at HSE University, in collaboration with international colleagues, have shown that by the end of first grade, children have already developed an important eye-movement skill for reading. Like adults, they quickly adapt the length of their saccades—rapid eye movements—to the length of words in sentences. However, children’s gazes tend to land near the beginnings of words, whereas adults tend to target areas closer to the centres of words. The more fluent the reading, the closer saccadic targeting is to the word centre. The study findings have been published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

The navigation system, developed by specialists from the Laboratory for Intelligent Unmanned Systems at HSE MIEM, is designed to search for missing people and allows the unmanned vehicle to autonomously execute route missions without satellite navigation. The Autonomous Search competition is notable for its comprehensive verification of actual working technologies. Out of 50 applications submitted, 15 were admitted to the qualification round, and four teams advanced to the finals.

HSE University hosted the first international conference on vibe coding, VIBE CODING RUSSIA 2026. More than 450 participants and speakers from universities, banks, the telecommunications and cybersecurity sectors, and the vibe-coding community discussed how AI is shortening the path from research findings to products and who is responsible for code written by an algorithm.

The International N5 Symposium ‘Neural Networks and Nonlinearity in Nizhny Novgorod’ was held at the Nizhny Novgorod House of Scientists from September 23 to 26. The event was organised by HSE University–Nizhny Novgorod and the Nizhny Novgorod House of Scientists, with the participation of Sberbank and the Institute of Physics Belgrade. The symposium was held for the second time: the first conference took place in 2025 and attracted considerable interest from the academic community.

In late September, HSE University hosted a roundtable discussion titled Civil Society in African Countries and Youth Participation in Public Diplomacy. Representatives of non-governmental organisations from Ghana, Ethiopia, and Russia, along with students from HSE University’s Bachelor’s Programme in Public Administration, discussed how young people without official diplomatic status can influence relations between countries and how the nonprofit sector can remain sustainable amid declining grant funding.

Russian universities, with the participation of HSE University, Sber, and Z-union, have developed a neural network that can simultaneously assess the risk of 15 types of pathology from retinal photographs, including not only eye diseases but also cardiovascular conditions. The AI system can help clinicians detect potentially concerning changes at an early stage, identify signs reflecting the condition of retinal blood vessels, and determine whether a patient may need further examination. The paper has been published in Frontiers in Medicine.

Researchers from HSE University’s Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience have synthesised the findings of their previous studies on brain development in children with obstetric brachial plexus palsy and arthrogryposis. Their analysis shows that impaired motor function in early childhood not only limits children’s motor experience but also affects memory, categorical thinking, and information processing. The study has been published in Frontiers in Psychology.

The International Laboratory for Supercomputer Atomistic Modelling and Multi-Scale Analysis at HSE University held a major conference on molecular dynamics. Participants had the opportunity to attend all the presentations, while speakers were given as much time as they needed to answer questions. The HSE News Service interviewed Grigory Smirnov, Head of the Laboratory, and Genri Norman, Chief Research Fellow, about the conference preparations and the discussions it generated.

In mid-September 2026, UNESCO held an online seminar entitled ‘Quantum Science and the Future of Quantum Technologies.’ During a panel discussion, Alexander Sokolov, Director of the International Research and Educational Foresight Centre at the HSE Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) and Chair of the UNESCO Chair on Future Studies at HSE University, presented the results of ISSEK’s Quantum Leap foresight study to international experts.

Engineers and researchers at the HSE Institute for Robotics Systems have successfully run the first tests of an AI-powered environmental recognition model deployed on a robot dog. The robot navigated around the HSE Pokrovka building and Pokrovsky Bulvar, analysing the surrounding environment to identify its location.