News

Alexander Aksakov, who graduated from ICEF in 2011, now works as a Senior Associate in the New York office of Credit Suisse. He tells Success Builder how the wedding of an ICEF graduate became a gathering of economists from around the world, how U.S. employers recruit candidates in bars and how to earn an MBA from one of the world’s most prestigious schools.

Verisium project founder Vadim Kostomarov is convinced that traditional banks will disappear in the new digital world. Financiers, however, will not be left without work, he adds reassuringly. HSE graduate Vadim Kostomarov tells Success Builder whether people should be divided into ‘techies’ and ‘humanities types,’ how to survive in the fashion industry and consulting, and talk about mistakes in looking for investors, and managing a ‘teal’ company.

China was the first country to be hit by the coronavirus, and other countries have looked to its handling of the outbreak as a model. Former HSE student Sergey Stepanov, who has been studying and working in China for the past four years, shared his personal experience with the COVID-19 outbreak while in China.

Alexandra Gudimova, graduate of the WEaIA Faculty, decided to study at HSE University because of an injury. She had to leave choreography academy, forget about ballet and the Bolshoi Theater, and restart her life from scratch. Now she heads a thriving business whose success attests to her professionalism. In this instalment of Success Builder, Ms Gudimova talks about how to write a graduate thesis about a family business, ride the snacking wave and create fast food for city dwellers.

In late March at the Kommunarka COVID-19 Hospital outside of Moscow, a pilot project was launched that allows healthcare professionals to coordinate their efforts remotely while working with coronavirus patients. The system, which is run using ‘smart glasses’, is now in operation at ten Moscow hospitals. Ilya Flaks, a graduate of HSE’s Master’s Programme in E-Business and project founder, spoke with the HSE News Service about how the smart glasses help doctors and what prospects lie ahead for using virtual reality (VR) in health care.

In 2018 Polina graduated from Faculty of Computer Science’s  Applied Mathematics and Computer Science  bachelor programme with honours. While studying, she worked for three years in Bayesian Methods Research Group. Last year Polina began PhD programme at the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University (USA).

Unexpectedly, one of last year’s trends was…mushrooms. Several startups have shown that mycelium is a suitable material for eco-friendly fabrics, fashionable foods and the manufacture of drugs to treat clinical depression. ‘Prototyping Future Cities’ Master’s Programme graduate Anna Budnikova took the mushroom trend one step further by inventing a building material she calls ‘mycokarst’. She tells Success Builder what the difference is between eco- and bio-materials, why to make water from air and design ‘passive homes’, and who urbanists are and how they are changing our cities.

In an interview for HSE News, Ksenia Mardanova, Head of the HSE Office for Alumni Relations and Career Development, talks about the importance of creating a campus atmosphere that graduates want to come back to, how to connected with HSE, and what graduates can do to help today’s students.

March 15 is the deadline for nominating candidates for the HSE Alumni Awards, which are given to outstanding alumni of HSE University. This year, the awards will be given in ten categories.

HSE University Rector Yaroslav Kuzminov and HSE alumnus Vladimir Potapov, CEO of VTB Capital Investment, have opened a student co-working space at MIEM HSE on Tallinskaya Ulitsa.