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Recognized card game masters claim that victory is possible only after making a thorough analysis of the likely combinations contained in your opponent’s cards, making it a literal application of data analytics to game theory. Anastasia Erastova, now a data scientist at the New York office of BNP Paribas, graduated from ICEF with honours. At the time, she was also the Russian vice-champion at bridge. In an interview with Success Builder, she explained why mathematics and gambling often go hand in hand, the advantages of studying next door to Wall Street and how math students can get a work visa in the United States.

Despite the crisis in the labour market caused by the pandemic, the Mail.ru company has hired approximately 1,000 new employees over the past six months. HSE graduate Dmitry Smyslov, the Mail.ru Group Vice President for Personnel and Educational Projects, played a central role in that process. In this interview with Success Builder, Mr Smyslov explains why there are not enough mathematicians and economists among HR directors, how Mail.ru is blurring the line between fundamental science and the IT industry, which types of specialists are in demand right now and what exactly makes Russian companies good for careerists.

Ekaterina Melianova and Artem Volgin, both graduates of the Master’s Programme Applied Statistics with Network Analysis, took second place in two CDP competitions: the Unlocking Climate Solutions Kaggle Competition and the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. In the coronavirus-related data competition, the HSE graduates outperformed professors and PhD students of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, the University of Washington, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and other foreign universities.

Light is a perfect medium according to Marshall McLuhan, who was the first to seek a deeper understanding of electronic communications. Modern media, however, have become the means not only for conveying facts but also for managing meanings — which is why the current agenda is shaped, to some extent, by the media. Dmitry Elovsky, Deputy Chief Editor at Dozhd TV and graduate of the Applied Politics programme at HSE, told Success Builder about the media’s strength as the so-called ‘fourth estate,’ how journalism is taught in the West, why working in Russian media is the province of the young and why the risk of ‘burnout’ is so great in this country.

The Master’s Programme Lawyer on the Global Financial Market began accepting students in 2018 and graduated its first class this year. Among them was Sberbank Chief Legal Advisor Irina Gridasova. In this interview with Success Builder, Ms Gridasova explains how to switch from political science to law without missing a beat, looks at gender stereotypes in the legal field and describes translating the clerical language of contracts into the language of living and breathing clients — a task all lawyers dread.

In his annual New Year's video address, HSE Rector Yaroslav Kuzminov wished everyone a happy holiday. 'This year we learned to help each other,' the rector said. 'In the coming year, may we take more delight and make new friends.'

Foreign investment plays a huge role in determining how the Russian economy will recover after its long illness. The RDIF accompanies most of those transactions. But, as HSE graduate and RDIF Investment Department Vice President Mikhail Kireev explains, the organization also has a social mission, in particular, to develop medicines and vaccines. In this interview with Success Builder, Mr Kireev also explains why HSE graduates are sought after, how the RDIF chooses companies for investment, where you can get an international degree when borders are closed and what constitutes a global education.

Technology education is just one of the areas that the RAR and its head, Alisa Konyukhovskaya, are engaged in. Thanks to this association, we are gradually ceasing to anthropomorphize robotics and the West is learning more about Russian technologies and supporting the Russian market with investments. Here, Ms Konyukhovskaya tells Success Builder how a philosopher can find her calling in technology, who makes the rules for robots and why study at HSE to learn how to manage innovations.

The airspace is becoming increasingly accessible to humans, thanks in part to HSE University graduate Alexander Atamanov and his flying motorcycles and cars. A graduate of the HSE University Master’s Programme in Corporate Research, Development and Innovation Management, he is not only an inventor and engineer but also the successful director of several startups. In this interview with Success Builder, he explains how to save inventors from the patent bureaucracy, what the Moscow authorities think about unmanned flights over the capital and why inventors prefer to test their flying cars themselves.

During her time at HSE University, alumna Anna Budnikova (MA, Prototyping Future Cities, 2019) developed an innovative project called Mycokarst under the supervision of leading Shukhov Lab expert Elena Mitrofanova. The project’s technology involves using fungal spores to repair karst sinkholes in urban environments. Now Budnikova’s innovation is patented.