News

In support of World AIDS Day 2024, the HSE Spanish Club and the HSX Student Club organised a lecture in English dedicated to the fight against the disease in Russia and Spain.

Syed Zeeshan Raza Zaidi is a 23-year-old international student from Karachi, Pakistan. He is currently a first-year master’s student in Cognitive Neuroscience at HSE University in Moscow seeking to explore the complexities of human behaviour and cognition from a multidisciplinary perspective. Syed spoke to the HSE News Service about why HSE is the best place to realise his potential, what makes Moscow and Karachi so similar, and why he misses home-cooked food most of all.

Eating fruit, wearing traditional outfits, and surviving the Moscow cold: Prep Year students from Vietnam, Iran, and Ghana talk about the New Year traditions in their countries and their plans for the celebration in Russia.

Liu Minglin, 22, from China, chose to study at ICEF in Moscow for two reasons: his Russian friends’ recommendations and the contents of the programme curriculum on the website. Now in his final year of the International Bachelor’s Programme in Economics and Finance at ICEF, Liu Minglin shares his impressions of living in Russia and studying at HSE University.

This winter, Moscow invites locals and visitors alike to revel in the atmosphere of the upcoming holidays in its shops, theatres, exhibitions, ice rinks, and more. The winter markets in particular create a special feeling of cosiness during the cold evenings. Read on to learn more about some of Moscow’s most festive markets this December.

In autumn 2024, Yea Rem Choi, from South Korea, Junior Research Fellow at the International Laboratory for Supercomputer Atomistic Modelling and Multi-scale Analysis and assistant at the HSE MIEM School of Applied Mathematics, defended his doctoral dissertation on applied mathematics at HSE University. Yea Rem Choi talked to the HSE News Service about the soft skills that helped him in his research, how he is building a career, and why he chose HSE University for his doctoral studies.

Learning Russian is one of the challenges international students face when they come to Russia. HSE University helps them not only with Russian classes, but with informal events such as the Russian Speaking Club, where they can absorb the language in a relaxed and non-competitive setting. The HSE News Service talked to the organisers and participants of the club about their impressions of the first meeting and plans for the future.

Han Zhang, from China, has worked at the International Laboratory for Evaluation of Practices and Innovations in Education at HSE University-Moscow since 2023. In October 2024, she successfully defended her PhD thesis on the relationship between collaborative peer editing and the quality of academic writing in a second language. She spoke with the HSE News Service about why she chose to join HSE University and how her research can be used to improve student writing performance.

On November 9, the building on Kantemirovskaya Street hosted Pakistani Culture Night. More than 80 people attended the event, including students and alumni of St Petersburg universities as well as Raja Qadeer Ahmed, a representative of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The event was organised by Syed Junaid Abbas, an international student of HSE University-St Petersburg.

The steadily growing interest in studying at HSE University, particularly among applicants from CIS and Asian countries, reflects the high quality of Russian education. This year, as part of a separate admissions process for international applicants, 2,267 students were enrolled across all HSE University's campuses for the 2024/25 academic year, representing a 14% increase compared to last year.