As we wrap up another year, it's time to look back at what our department has accomplished. 2025 brought us 42 published papers spanning fundamental ML theory, applied AI systems, and cutting-edge optimization methods—from transformer Hessians and generative models to hallucination detection and matrix-oriented optimizers.

Beyond publications, our students won competitions and defended their theses: 14 Bachelor's, 9 Master's, 3 PhD, and 1 DSc dissertations. They also launched ambitious group research projects. Three of our faculty and alumni received the prestigious Yandex ML Prize, and our head Konstantin Vorontsov was inducted into the Hall of Fame. If you read our summer overview of thesis defences or last winter's year-in-review for 2024, this post continues that story with the next chapter.

In this year-in-review, we dive into the research highlights, share stories from our educational programs, and celebrate the community that makes it all possible.

Intelligent Systems at Phystech: 2025 Year in Review