Yandex and Higher School of Economics Open Computer Science Faculty

Internet, April 2, 2014. The Higher School of Economics and Yandex are opening a Faculty of Computer Science. It will prepare specialists in two areas – Applied Mathematics and Informatics, and Software Engineering. The Dean of the Faculty will be Ivan Arzhantsev, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, who has been heading Yandex’s academic programs.

“Computer science is developing so fast that traditional education can’t keep up with it,” said Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh. “At the same time, there is now huge demand for computer science specialists. Together with the HSE, we want to create a faculty where people can receive a full education in this field. We are sure they will be in demand in academia as well as in IT companies.”

“The idea of the Faculty of Computer Science organically fits into the development of our university, but it was Yandex’s proposal that gave impetus to the faculty’s creation,” said HSE Rector Yaroslav Kuzminov. “The HSE is now fourth among Russian research and higher educational institutes by number of publications on information technology. We hope that together with Yandex we will be able to attract top specialists, staff of leading Russian and foreign IT companies, to teach and conduct research.”

The faculty incorporates the HSE’s existing Department of Software Engineering and Department of Applied Mathematics and Informatics, which will be supplemented by the addition of a new department – Big Data and Information Retrieval – to be established on the foundations of a Yandex school that has been operating at the HSE since 2008. The faculty’s study programs are to be created jointly by HSE teaching staff and Yandex specialists, and will include courses in machine learning, computer vision, Big Data and other areas of computer science. Lectures and seminars will be led by HSE academics, Yandex staff and teachers from the School of Data Analysis.

The faculty will offer Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate courses, starting in September. In 2014, there will be 180 state-subsidized study places, in addition to fee-paying places. Applicants will be selected on the basis of Unified State Exam results in mathematics, informatics and Russian language, as well as performance in Olympiads for mathematics, informatics and linguistics.

Yandex’s academic programs include educational courses as well as internships for developers, managers and other IT specialists at the start of their careers. In 2007, Yandex opened the School of Data Analysis, which provides supplementary education in the fields of data analysis and computer science. Yandex also runs Master’s-level programs at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and St. Petersburg State University. The Small School of Data Analysis opened last year for school students interested in mathematics and informatics.

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