HSE Biologists Identify Factors That Accelerate Breast Cancer Recurrence
Scientists at HSE University have identified a molecular mechanism underlying aggressive breast cancer. They found that the signals supporting tumour growth originate not from the tumour itself but from its microenvironment. The researchers also demonstrated that reduced levels of the IGFBP6 protein in the tumour microenvironment lead to the accumulation of macrophages—immune cells associated with a higher risk of cancer recurrence. These findings already make it possible to assess patient risk more accurately and may, in the future, enable the development of drugs that target cells of the tumour microenvironment. The study has been published in Current Drug Therapy.
HSE University Presents Research Results at AI Conference in Oman
In April 2026, the International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Artificial Intelligence Applications (ISAA 2026) was held at the University of Nizwa in the Sultanate of Oman. The event was co-organised by HSE University, the University of Nizwa, and the University of Technology and Applied Sciences–Ibri. Researchers from HSE University were among the key speakers at the conference.
Russian Scientists Propose Method to Speed Up Microwave Filter Design
Researchers at HSE MIEM, in collaboration with colleagues from the Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics (MTUCI), have implemented a novel approach to designing microwave filters—generative synthesis using machine learning tools. The proposed method reduces the filter development cycle from several days to just a few minutes and in the future could be applied to the design of other microwave electronic devices. The results were presented at the IEEE International Conference '2026 Systems of Signals Generating and Processing in the Field of on Board Communications.'
HSE University Opens Access to Microdata from Study on Economic Behaviour of Russians
As part of the project ‘Economic Behaviour of Households in Russia’ (EBHR), HSE University is opening access to nationally representative primary datasets. This data makes it possible to explore various aspects of well-being and the economic behaviour of Russian households across different income groups in contemporary economic conditions.
When Circumstances Are Stronger Than Habits: How Financial Stress Affects Smoking Cessation
HSE researchers have found that the likelihood of quitting smoking rises with increasing financial struggles. While low levels of financial difficulties do not affect smoking behaviour, moderate financial stress can increase the probability of quitting by 13% to 21%. Responses to high financial stress differ by gender: men are almost 1.5 times more likely to give up cigarettes than under normal conditions, whereas no significant effect is observed on women’s decisions to quit smoking. These conclusions are based on data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE) for 2000–2023 and have been published in Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes.
‘HSE Offers a Lot, Not Just Academically, but Also in Terms of Community and Unexpected Opportunities’
Zhou Jinyu, from China, is a fourth-year student of the Bachelor’s programme ‘Data Science and Business Analytics’ at the HSE University Faculty of Computer Science. On March 5, 2026, Zhou Jinyu delivered the report ‘Exploration of Object-Centric Process Mining Using Object-Centric Sequence Diagrams’ as part of the PAIS Lab seminar. In her interview with the HSE News Service, she spoke on her research topic, how object-centric process mining lets data reflect reality, and her overall experience of studying at HSE University.
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 University Researchers Analyse Education Policy in Fifty Countries
By 2030, the global education system will need 44 million new teachers. Schools have already started rehiring retired teachers and issuing licenses for accelerated programmes. Experts from the HSE University Institute of Education have analysed the educational policies of almost 50 countries and published the report ‘World Education Policy—2025.’
Researchers from HSE and Iran University of Science and Technology Study Intellectual Resources
In February 2026, the International Laboratory of Intangible-Driven Economy (IDLab) and Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) held a joint seminar as part of the project ‘Internationalisation of Companies from Developing Countries: The Role of Intellectual Resources in Response to Exogenous Shocks.’ The project has been implemented as part of the ‘International Academic Cooperation of HSE University’ initiative.
HSE Physicists Propose Unified Theory for Describing Electric Double Layer
To develop more efficient batteries and catalysts, it is essential to understand the processes occurring at the metal–solution interface in the electric double layer (EDL). Physicists at HSE MIEM have proposed a unified theoretical model of the EDL that simultaneously accounts for selective adsorption of ions on the surface and partial charge transfer between ions and the metal—phenomena that had previously been described separately. The model’s predictions are consistent with experimental data. In the future, it may be used in the development of batteries, supercapacitors, and catalysts. The study has been published in Electrochimica Acta.