HSE University Hosts ‘Foresight and STI Policy’ Conference

The Foresight and STI Policy Conference is held in Moscow every fall and brings together leading researchers from all over the world. This year’s conference drew researchers from Austria, Armenia, Belarus, Brazil, Great Britain, India, Spain, Italy, Kazakhstan, China, the Netherlands, South Korea, Singapore, the USA, Thailand, France, South Africa, and Japan.

 

Leonid Gokhberg, First Vice-Rector of HSE University, Director of HSE ISSEK: 'This is our ninth Foresight and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy conference. This is the only international academic conference in this field in Russia. It has become a signature event for our university and has achieved wide international recognition. In particular, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development lists it among the most respected foresight research forums. This year, the conference featured about 50 presentations by leading scientists and experts, as well as our early career researchers'.

 

Evaluative study of the current state of science itself as well as the study of promising areas for its development are becoming more and more popular every year. ‘This area is very important for the modern world, it is developing rapidly, and we believe it is important to hold our own conference,’ says Alexander Sokolov, Director of the Foresight Centre at ISSEK HSE. This conference is one of HSE’s major events, because it positions the university as a world leader in foresight

 

The conference opened on November 20 with a special seminar, ‘Smart Cities and a Sustainable Urban Future’, where a delegation from Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), as well as several HSE University researchers, shared the recent research on urban development.

ISSEK researchers Yulia Milshina and Lyubov Matic presented their work involving global trends in housing, which they have used to develop the first technological roadmap for housing construction in Russia for the website, DOM.RF. Irina Ilina, Director of the Institute of Regional Studies and Urban Planning, spoke about assessing the digital development potential of Russian cities, which appears to be quite high for megacities and science cities. Pablo David Goldin Markovich, a researcher with the Shukhov Lab (the International Laboratory for Experimental Urban Design) gave a talk entitled, ‘Towards a City with Zero Emissions: Challenges and Reflections on the Concept of Moscow's Development for the Period until 2050’.

Thai researchers shared their vision of how Bangkok and other Thai cities will develop by 2040. In their reports, they touched on the most important aspects of life in a megalopolis: the development of the housing and service sectors, the transport system, as well as the future of the homeless.

The conference continued on November 21 with a discussion of the tools of scientific and technological foresight. ISSEK researchers Alexander Chulok, Ozcan Saritas, Yulia Milshina, Ilya Kuzminov, and Pavel Bakhtin presented foresight research areas in artificial intelligence and the analysis of key future events, discussed the application of foresight methods in Russian corporations, and talked about the use of big data analysis tools in various HSE’s foresight projects.

A separate block in a number of ISSEK reports discussed the capabilities of the iFORA system, which allows researchers to analyse millions of strategic analytical documents in Russian, English and, as of this year, Chinese.

International speakers, particularly those from the UK, France, the USA, and Singapore, talked about the transformative power of foresight for cities and large companies, the future of work and education within the context of widespread digitalization.

The final day, November 22, was dedicated to recent research in science, technology, and innovation policy.

The conference concluded with a special seminar, ‘Prospects for the Development of Science and Technology in the BRICS Countries’. Representatives of the academic community of the five states, embassies, and relevant ministries discussed the principles of scientific cooperation and specific areas of interaction. HSE ISSEK researchers Maxim Kotsemir and Alexander Sokolov presented a bibliometric analysis of emerging economies.