Registration Opens for ‘Research Initiative’ Team Project Competition

Photo by Ekaterina Petrova

The HSE Centre for Student Academic Development has started accepting applications for the third ‘Research Initiative’ student team research project competition. Bachelor’s and master’s students from all HSE campuses are eligible to participate. The competition gives students an opportunity to not only take on research roles, but also to try their hand at working as academic managers and supervisors of a small research team.

Registration will remain open until February 28.

One of the main goals of the competition is to give students an idea of the model of grant-based research in order to prepare them for future grant competitions. The ‘Research Initiative’ competition allows students to learn how research projects work, get a feel for life as a researcher, and build their own vision of the academic environment and its principles.

Andrey Kozhanov

‘The competition creates conditions for developing team project skills and forming a university research community. It motivates students and prepares them for research grant competitions,’ said Andrey Kozhanov, Director Centre for Student Academic Development. ‘We offer students an opportunity to take on leadership roles in research teams, as well as experience how academic culture works within a team, how roles and tasks are distributed in a research project, and how the academic grant ‘treadmill’ isn’t an obstacle to research progress.’

The main innovation of the 2022 competition will be its focus on interdisciplinary and intercampus student research teams. In addition to promoting interdisciplinary professional research groups, these associations will create an integrated space for academic communication between students of all HSE campuses under the principles of academic ethics and researcher culture. This will facilitate mutually beneficial exchanges and provide students with extensive experience in team management in order to achieve specific research goals and use academic work to produce an end product.

Yulia Vitko

‘The “Research Initiative” competition is an interim step on the academic ladder: you can take on new responsibilities, but ones you’re capable of taking on. The only way to learn to manage an academic project is to actually manage one, and the competition offers this opportunity,’ said Yulia Vitko, competition participant and head of the project ‘Implementation of self-help practices for homeless people’. ‘During this last year working on the project, my team I and have learned new things through the implementation process, and it is a great feeling when a year later, you can look back and see how far you’ve come.’

Elizaveta Ganetskaya

‘Our team applied so that we could take our first steps in research and experience the atmosphere of real science! We managed to implement a rather complicated and important biotech project, which may serve as the basis for an R&D start-up,’ said Elizaveta Ganetskaya, competition participant and head of the project ‘Targeted microfungi ferments for wound therapy’. ‘My peers and I are grateful for this excellent opportunity to carry out research and to learn to work comfortably and effectively in a small research team’.

Sergey Vinogradov

‘This competition provides a great opportunity to get started in research,’ said Sergey Vinogradov, competition participant and head of the project ‘Right to the city: evolution of the concept, constitutional foundation and forms of mobilisation’. ‘It definitely gives you a unique experience of doing research work on a team, organising project applications and reports, and presenting your research outcomes in a way that is understandable not only to experts, but to a wider audience as well.’

The winning teams will get an opportunity to complete a standard cycle of grant-based science—from application to report presentation—over the course of a year. They will be able to carry out research with financial, organisational and expert support from the organizers, as well as to develop their project skills and ability to work in a research team.

Participate in the competition and implement your research project!

• Those interested can apply here. Applications are open from February 1–28.
• Each team must have a minimum of three members.
• Bachelor’s and master’s students of all HSE programmes and campuses are eligible to take part, but only participants of the Science Republic project can head the group and fill in the application.

Subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest competition news. If you have any questions, please contact us via email at studscience@hse.ru.