Popular science

If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. Notes on the Forgotten Nature of Zen Koans

I don’t know how koans were perceived when they sounded like thunder. Perhaps not at all as they are analyzed by modern philosophers. Perhaps koans were not analyzed, but lived. And it is impossible to transmit a lived experience across centuries. It is an individual experience. Well then, perhaps we have lost the essence of koans. Or perhaps we never knew it. In that case, I can very well allow myself to present koans as I see them.

The students of the Intelligent Systems Department successfully defended their bachelor’s and master’s theses. This year, 14 Bachelor’s and 8 Master’s students earned their degrees in Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Sciences. We are proud to say that our Department is unique in publishing the complete set of defense materials during the last ten years. These materials include the text of the dissertation work, the published papers, the code of the computational experiments, and the slides with video of the defense talk.

In this post, we gladly summarize the defended works of our BS and MS students and highlight the results. A recording of their pre-defence presentations can be found here and here in Russian. Most part of the theses has a publicly available English version. 

Traditional approaches to SQL query generation often rely on instruction-tuned language models, but these can be inefficient and inaccurate. In this article, we’ll explore a new method based on reinforcement learning for model fine-tuning, which can improve both the accuracy and efficiency of SQL generation.

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.

2025. Algorithms have seamlessly integrated into our lives—from work to education, creativity, and daily routines. They edit texts, select fonts, generate ideas, assist with coding, compose music, and more. Frankly speaking, the only thing they can’t do yet is brew your coffee. Although... that might just be a matter of time.

Just two years ago, we were amazed by neural networks hesitantly manipulating objects in photos. Who could predict back then that Will Smith’s spaghetti feast would mark the beginning of such a revolution?

With new opportunities come fresh challenges. How do you navigate this vast landscape? What tools are truly effective? Which ones fit your needs best? Where can you avoid paying, registering, or deciphering complex interfaces?

We’ve compiled a list of reliable and user-friendly neural networks ready for immediate use without unnecessary hassles. The services are categorized neatly: text generation, image creation, video production, music composition, presentations, and much more. Each category showcases three top-rated options!

Yes, many services offer paid subscriptions. But today, we're focusing solely on what works freely, no credit card required!