Young researchers from our laboratory have received support through two prestigious Russian competitions: Maxim Markitantov became a winner of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) competition, while Mikhail Dolgushin was awarded a Scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation for postgraduate students and adjuncts.

Russian Science Foundation Project

RSF Project No. 26-71-00035 “Intelligent System for Robust Bimodal Recognition of Human Emotional States under Challenging Acoustic and Visual Conditions”

Project leader — Maxim Markitantov, PhD.
Project period: 2026–2028.

The project received support from the Russian Science Foundation within the competition for investigator-initiated research by young scientists. The research addresses one of the key challenges of modern affective artificial intelligence — reliable automatic recognition of human emotional states not only in laboratory settings but also under real-world conditions.

Particular attention will be paid to situations in which the quality of audio and video data is degraded by background noise, insufficient illumination, human movement, occlusions, and partial unavailability of individual modalities. The proposed approach combines advanced audio and video analysis models, generative methods, and dynamic estimation of modality reliability. The project results may provide a foundation for more robust, safe, and adaptive intelligent systems for healthcare, transportation, industry, and digital services.

Learn more about the RSF competition results

Scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation

Mikhail D. Dolgushin, a second-year postgraduate student at SPC RAS and a junior researcher at the Speech and Multimodal Interfaces Laboratory, became a winner of the 2026 competitive selection for Scholarships of the President of the Russian Federation for postgraduate students and adjuncts.

Mikhail is pursuing his postgraduate studies in specialty 2.3.5, “Mathematical and Software Support for Computing Systems, Complexes, and Computer Networks.” His scientific supervisor is Alexey A. Karpov, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, and Head of the Speech and Multimodal Interfaces Laboratory.

Mikhail's research focuses on developing methods for multimodal recognition of human cognitive impairments through digital analysis of conversational speech and behavioral manifestations. The proposed methods aim to improve the accuracy, robustness, and interpretability of early cognitive impairment detection, which is particularly relevant to the development of telemedicine and the application of artificial intelligence technologies in healthcare.

Following the competitive selection, Mikhail was among 800 scholarship recipients. The scholarship of 75,000 rubles is awarded for the entire period of his postgraduate studies.

Learn more about the Scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation

We congratulate Maxim Markitantov and Mikhail Dolgushin and wish them successful research, new scientific achievements, and further professional success!