Our Team

PhD (“Doctor”) in computational linguistics, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences, HSE – St. Petersburg.

Research Interests: sociology of the Internet and of mass communication, sociology of advertising, political communication, Internet data analysis, Internet community, clustering, mathematical algorithms, sociolinguistic algorithms, Internet social network research, social research of the Internet.

Email: ekoltsova@hse.ru

PhD in Philology (Experimental and Applied Linguistics), Master of Science in Biology (Neuroscience), Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Philology, HSE University (St. Petersburg).

Major areas of expertise: communication neuroscience, cognitive modeling, large-scale language models (LLM).

Research interests: interdisciplinary research at the intersection of linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and computer science, aimed at decoding the mechanisms of human communication, including multimodal and HCI-mediated communication. Key areas of research:
• Modeling cognitive processes in digital environments: reconstructing individual strategies for perceiving and evaluating medical information based on the analysis of behavioral data, self-reports, and digital traces generated during human-computer interactions;
• Experimental neurolinguistics: studying neurophysiological and oculomotor markers of text processing and computer modeling of cognitive processes based on the analysis of oculomotor and EEG data using machine learning methods;
• Developing agents based on large language models (LLM): studying the phenomenon of "consensus mirage" and assessing the potential of LLMs as autonomous participants in medical communication.

Methodology: A synthesis of experimental and quantitative approaches: from controlled laboratory experiments and in-depth cognitive interviews to the analysis of large arrays of behavioral data, self-reports, and digital traces generated by users in online environments. This multi-level repertoire allows not only to identify stable individual markers of successful communication but also to translate fundamental cognitive-linguistic insights into applied solutions, including artificial intelligence architectures and adaptive systems.

Applied Projects:
The course "Eye Tracking Technologies in UX Analytics" is a project implemented annually since 2022 in partnership between students, the Social and Cognitive Informatics Laboratory, and the IT Cluster.
The project focuses on using eye tracking to objectively analyze user behavior when interacting with digital products—from interfaces to marketing materials. We record where users look, where they focus, and which elements go unnoticed, providing clients with data rather than guesswork.
Project Partners:
• My Office
• Playkot (game development)
• VSK Insurance House
• 2GIS
— and other companies interested in evidence-based UX research.

E-mail: edartemenko@hse.ru

Email: ezabrudskaya@hse.ru

PhD in Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Doctor of Sciences, Professor, Department of Informatics, St. Petersburg School of Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science. Academic Supervisor of the programme 'Applied Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence', HSE – St. Petersburg.

Research Interests: Machine learning in sociology, topic modeling, text sentiment analysis, neural networks, Internet research, Statistical physics, statistical theory of complex systems and its applications for processing big data from social networks, R language, Python, Delphi, Visual Studio c++, 3D technology (OpenGl), algorithmics, project management, OpenMP, CUDA, OpenCL technologies.

Email: kol-sergei@yandex.ru

Phd in Social psychology, Associate Professor, Department of Social Psychology, St. Petersburg State University .

Research Interests: computational psychology, cognitive social psychology, social capital, online communication, social intelligence, networking strategies, group psychology.

Email: larisamararitsa@mail.ru

PhD in mathematics, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, HSE University, St. Petersburg.

Research interests: neural networks, large-scale language models (LLM), agent-based AI systems, and mathematical methods in artificial intelligence.

Skills and competencies: Python, LaTeX, machine learning, deep learning, working with large-scale language models, mathematical modeling, and working with high-performance computing (HPC).

Email: vignatenko@hse.ru

PhD in Sociology (HSE University, 2023), Master of Social Psychology (St. Petersburg State University, 2016), and additional qualification in Applied Informatics (European University, 2023).

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at HSE St. Petersburg, Visiting Lecturer at the European University (St. Petersburg) and Kazakhstan Sociology Lab (Astana).

Research Interests:
Interdisciplinary quantitative studies of user communication and behavior in the digital environment, including the following aspects:
- individual characteristics in the use of online media and social platforms for communication with others and their impact on subjective well-being and the quality of social connections;
- information behavior in the digital environment, including searching for, evaluating medical information, and making decisions about health and quality of life;
- the role of AI systems and the transformation of digital communication – user perception of AI systems and trust in AI-generated information.

Skills and Competencies:
Design and conduct interdisciplinary research in the field of communication and analysis of user digital footprints (surveys, online experiments); development, adaptation, or analysis of the psychometric characteristics of psychological questionnaires; quantitative statistical data analysis using various data analysis methods in the R programming environment (regression analysis, SEM, SNA, etc.); qualitative research methods (deep and cognitive interviews) and qualitative data analysis (MAXQDA, Atlas.ti); scientific communication and academic writing (preparation of publications in international journals in Russian and English, peer review, presentation of results at scientific conferences); teaching and course design (research methodology in the social sciences, survey data, social psychology).

E-mail: yasinyawskaya@mail.ru

Msc in Machine Learning and Data-Intensive Systems, scientific supervisor - Sergey Koltsov.

Dissertation topic: "Optimization of Machine Learning Algorithms Using Parameterized Functions."

Research interests: NLP, LLMs, RAG, agents, application of LLM to solving mathematical problems, application of concepts from non-extensive statistical physics to various areas of machine learning, machine learning with oculomotor data (eye movement data).

Skills: ML/DL: transformers, sentence-transformers, langchain, langgraph, qwen-agent, pytorch, pytorch lightning, deepspeed. Dev: github, docker. Web development in Python (reflex, streamlit, fastapi). Development and teaching of courses on modern NLP and advanced machine learning (both in Russian and English).

Email: aysurkov@hse.ru

Master of Psychology, Bachelor of Linguistics, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, PhD student in Psychology, scientific supervisor - Elena Gorbunova.

Dissertation Topic: "Psychological Mechanisms of Text Perception: The Role of Perceptual Complexity."

Research Interests: Perceptual and cognitive non-fluency, metacognitive processes, working memory, spatial abilities, personality traits, online communication, gender differences in cognitive functions.

Skills and Competencies:
— Designing and conducting experiments (laboratory and online);
— Developing and validating methods;
— Data analysis: R, JASP, SPSS; experience with eye-tracking;
— Open Science: pre-registration, publication of data and scripts;
— Science Communication: publications in international journals, peer review, participation in interdisciplinary collaborations, citizen science projects, popularization of science;
— teaching and course design (statistics, methodology).

Email: etsigeman@hse.ru

Master in Linguistics, PhD student in the Department of Philology, scientific supervisor: Olessia Koltsova

Dissertation topic: Linguistic determinants of the effectiveness of fact-checking medical information using large language models.

Research interests: computational linguistics, cognitive research, experimental linguistic methods, natural language processing.

Skills and competencies: computational natural language processing, R, Python.

Email: pkolmogorova@hse.ru

Master's degree in Psychology, lecturer in the Department of Sociology, PhD candidate in the Psychology program, supervisor: Larisa Tsvetkova.

Dissertation topic: The relationship between therapeutic alliance and interpersonal synchrony in psychologist-client dyads in psychological counseling.

Research interests: interpersonal synchrony, social neuroscience, psychophysiological correlates of social interaction, automated behavior analysis, behavioral coding, quality of mediated interaction, human-AI interaction, trust in AI agents.

Skills and competencies: Design and data collection for interdisciplinary studies of social interaction in naturalistic settings, work with psychophysiological and survey methods, development and validation of questionnaires. In-depth analysis of individual cases (series of individual cases), qualitative research methods (deep and cognitive interviews) and analysis (content analysis, vignette analysis), analysis of video data and nonverbal behavior, statistical methods for analyzing interpersonal synchrony using time series data, R, SPSS.

E-mail: oreshinagalina.kosm@gmail.com

HEad of Analytical Division, InDrive

Research interests: time series forecasting, casual inference, nature language processing, financial data & news, discrete optimization.

Doctoral student at Doctoral School of Sociology, National Research University Higher School of Economics St. Petersburg.

Research interests: social attitudes, implicit research methods, methodology and methods of sociological and socio-psychological research.

E-mail: aleksiiahse@gmail.com

PhD in Linguistics, Postdoc at the National Key Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University.
Research interests: individual differences in education, spatial ability, anxiety, network psychometrics and neuroscience.

E-mail: maximus.minimus@mail.ru

Phd in Biology.

Research interests: machine learning, big data analysis.

PhD, Biology; associate professor of the Department of General and Applied Psychology of the Altai State University.

Research interests: psychophysiological and neurophysiological studies of mental performance; study of brain color photostimulation effects on memory and attention indicators in normal children and in children with ADHD; neurophysiological correlates of implicit processes.

MA in Sociology, PhD in Economics, PhD candidate at Georgia State University, USA.

Research Interests: economics of the film industry, gender studies in cinema, social networks.

Research interests: cognitive social psychology, social psychology of communication, organizational social psychology, virtual communication, subjective well-being.

E-mail: oolgabbelova@gmail.com

PhD in Psychology, Senior professor of psychology at the University of Potsdam, Germany

Research Interests: Eye movements, Microsaccades, Attention, Working memory, Reading, Data analysis and modeling, Cognitive aging.

Associate Professor, School of Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of Computer Science, HSE, Research Fellow, International Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Structural Analysis, Faculty of Computer Science, HSE, PhD in Mathematical Sciences

Research Interests: Formal Concept Analysis, Frequent (Closed) Sets and Association Rules Mining, Biclustering, Triclustering and Multi-dimensional Clustering, Graph Mining, Educational Data Mining, Recommender Systems, Analysing Social Resource Sharing and Crowdsourcing Systems.

PhD in Philology, Head of the Laboratory of the Voronezh State Pedagogical University.

Research interests: computational linguistics

PhD in Philology, senior researcher at the Institute for Cognitive Research, Saint Petersburg State University.

Research Interests: Psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and computational linguistics.

Ph. D. in Media and Public Affairs, Senior Editor at Binance, Dubai.

Research interests: political communication, media effects, online platforms politics, experimental methods, data analysis.

PhD student, Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Bern.

Research Interests: sociology of the Internet and of mass communication, media effects.

Head of the Machine Intelligence Laboratory at MIPT, Head of the Department "Intelligent Systems" of the Computing Center of the Institution of Russian Academy of Sciences Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of RAS, prof. of the dep. "Intelligent Systems" MIPT, Assoc. prof. "Mathematical Methods of Forecasting" CMC MSU, Deputy Director for Science, Forexis.

Research interests: mathematical methods.

Research Fellow at the Laboratory of Mathematical Logic of the St.-Petersburg Department of the Steklov Mathematical Institute, Research Director, Surfingbird
Adjunct Professor, Academic University, St. Petersburg, PhD in Mathematics.

Research Interests: Probabilistic graphical models, machine learning, recommendation systems, bioinformatics, computational complexity theory, theoretical cryptography, circuit complexity, algebra (Chevalley groups), and algebraic geometry (theory of motives).

Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor of the Department of Mass Communications Management, St. Petersburg State University.

Research Interests: Media and politics, social media communication, online deliberation, social media and ethnicity, social media journalism standards.

PhD in Computer Science, Full Professor, Dept. of Computer Systems and Computation, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain.

Research Interests: Natural language processing (NLP), social media analysis.

Senior Research Fellow, International Centre for Health Economics, Management, and Policy, St.Petersburg School of Economics and Management, HSE – St. Petersburg, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Humanities, HSE – St. Petersburg, Research Fellow, Center for Independent Social Research, St.Petersburg, PhD in Sociology.

Research Interests: netnography, sociology of health and illness, e-health, public health, cultural sociology, sociology of social problems, sociology of deviance, social aspects of drug abuse, social aspects of HIV and Hepatitis C, sociology of mass communication, socio-cultural theory of risk, social theory, and qualitative methods.

PhD in Sociology.

Research Interests: Construction of social problems and deviance, sociology of mass communication, and history of sociology in Kazan.

Senior Research Fellow, the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, HSE – Saint Petersburg, Head of Department of Political Science and International Affairs St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Humanities, HSE – Saint Petersburg, PhD in Political Science.

Research Interests: Political economy, regional studies, and youth policy.

MA in Applied Informatics, St Petersburg University, Invited Researcher, data science engineer - DINS.

Research interests: computational linguistics, data analysis, machine learning

PhD in Psychology and an MSc in Computer Science. Postdoctoral Researcher, Maynooth University.

Research Interests: Mathematical models and data mining in psychology, marketing and management (including social network analysis, cluster, factor, regression analysis and machine learning methods). Decision-making methods and decision-making psychology, Natural language processing, Pedagogical psychology, Cross-cultural psychology, Mental processes and states.

Senior Research Fellow of the Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology, Senior Lecturer:Faculty of the Department of Economic Sociology

Research Interests: economic sociology, sociology of the Internet and of mass communication.

PhD in Psychology, Associate Professor of the Department of Social Psychology, St. Petersburg State University.

Research interests: interpersonal relationships, attachment in adulthood, quality of close relationships.

E-mail: tatakaz@mail.ru

Senior Data Analyst at Sber, PhD of Technical Sciences

Research interests: topic modeling and parallel machine learning algorithms

NLP Research Engineer, CNRS, LORIA (Nancy, France)

Research Interests: Computational linguistics, lexicography, lexical semantics, and corpus linguistics.

Associate Professor, Department of Mathematical Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, Saint Petersburg State University, PhD in Philology

Research Interests: Mathematical models of language, computational linguistics, corpus linguistics, linguistic semantics, formal semantics, and automatic lexicography.

PhD in History, Head of the Laboratory for Digital Studies of Literature and Folklore, Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) RAS

Research Interests: educational anthropology, corpus linguistics, automatic text processing, and the Soviet school.

PhD in Economics, Junior Researcher CERGE-EI (Prague), Data scientist, MSD, Prague.

Research interests: financial markets, financial econometrics, financial time series, global financial crises.

Researcher at the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurodynamics of St. Petersburg State University.

Research Interests: cognitive sciences, spatial abilities, eye tracking method, experimental methods.

MA in Social psychology.

Research interests: digital footprints, social signature, psychology of communication and group studies of social networks, research and development of communities, mental health, big data analysis.

PhD student at Doctoral School of Cognitive Science HSE University, Moscow.

Research Interests: cognitive psychology, individual differences in personality traits and learning, functional connectivity, mental fatigue.

PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Information Science, Faculty of Education & Psychology, Shahid Beheshti University (Tehran, Iran)

Research interests: false information, Information Retrieval, Social Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction, behavioral decision making, social media, online communication.

Ph. D., Research Fellow, Department of Management of Complex and Innovative Technological Systems, University of Bamberg (Germany).
Research interests: political communication, public sphere, social media, machine learning.

E-mail: pashakhin@gmail.com

Research Fellow at Neuroglee Therapeutics, Singapore.
Research Interests: Digital health, digital phenotyping, online communities and health behavior, online health communication, health informatics, social capital and health, social contagion, social network analysis, Internet Studies, Web Science, social inequality, online communication.

Email: rykyur@gmail.com

Research interests: Coputer Science, Machine and Deep Learning

Bachelor's degree student in Applied Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence, HSE

Master student of the program "Cognitive science: Embodied cognition", University of Potsdam, Germany.

Research interests: cognitive psychology, development of experimental design, psychophysiological experimental methods, study of eye movements during text perception.

Research Interests: Sociology of the Internet, Privacy Studies, Sociology of Education.

Programmer, data scientist, Sber.

Research interests: Internet data analysis, text mining, natural language processing, social networks analysis, social theories.

Researcher at the University of Bonn.

Research Interests: social movements, internet and social networks research, democratization, political participation.

Researcher at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences, Department of Computational Social Science., MA in Political Science (University of Mannheim, Germany).

Research Interests: Mass communication, the Internet, social media, conflicts, and migration.

BA Student, Department of economics, St.Petersburg School of Economics and Management, HSE – St. Petersburg.

Head of Student Office, Faculty of Sociology, HSE – St. Petersburg.

Research Interests: Sociology of Mass Communications, Sociology of Mass Media, Sociology of Youth, Methods of Sociological Research, Political Sociology.

PhD student в University of Pennsylvania.

Research Interests: Automatic text analysis, sociology of science, and social theory.

Project Manager, Association for Co-operation with Nordic Countries ‘NORDEN’ , St.Petersburg, MA in Political Science (HSE – Saint Petersburg).

PhD student, School of Business Administration, Faculty of Business and Management, HSE
Lecturer, Department of Management, St.Petersburg School of Economics and Management.

Research interests: Marketing research, marketing practices of emerging markets, and strategic marketing.

Manager of advertising projects, Дневник.ру.

Research Interests: Educational programmes and cultural economics.

TL Data Science, seniour team lead ZERO Armenia.

Research Interests: language picture of the world, word embedding, NLP.

Master student of the program "Financial Technologies and Data Analysis", HSE Moscow.

Research interests: Machine learning in Time Series and NLP

Master student of the program "UX-analytics and design of information systems", NRU HSE St. Petersburg.

Scientific interests: interface research, using eyetracker methods, ux-analytics.

Master student of the program "Modern social analysis", St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Oriental Studies.

Research interests: computer-mediated communication, virtual reality communication, sociology of everyday life, data analysis in Python and R.

Graduate of the MA program "Contemporary social analysis", HSE St. Petersburg.

Research interests: data analysis, network analysis, sociology of migration.

Graduate of the MA program "Contemporary social analysis", HSE St. Petersburg.

"UX Analytics and Information Systems Design" Master's program graduate

Faculty of Computer Science, Applied Mathematics and Information Science program graduate

St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences graduate

Master's student in "Machine learning and data analysis", HSE University, St.Petersburg

E-mail: kmkupitman@edu.hse.ru

Research interests: social psychology, social networks and Internet communication, political sociology, youth sociology.

Email: drgracheva@edu.hse.ru

St. Petersburg School of Informatics, Physics, and Technology, "Applied Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence" program graduate