Herzen State Pedagogical Univ. is a large Russian university. It includes more than 20 faculties and 100 departments, as well as the Institute of Pre-University Training, the Institute for Advanced Training and Retraining, the Research Institute of Continuous Pedagogical Education, the Institute of Natural Science, the Institute of Humanitarian Education, the Interuniversity Center for International Cooperation, the International Center for Educational Innovations, the Center for Distance Learning and Telecommunication Support for Education, the Linguistic Center, the Center for Learning Technologies, and the Center for International Education "Russian Research".

All educational structural divisions interact with the university's scientific divisions: the Research Institute of Physics, the Research Institute of Continuous Pedagogical Education, the Research Institute of General Education, and more than 25 research centers and laboratories.

Integration of educational and scientific-innovative activities is carried out in 9 scientific-educational centers, the joint interdisciplinary center for collective use "Modern physical and chemical methods of forming and studying materials for the needs of industry, science and education", and the small innovative enterprise "Organika RSPU".

Currently, there are 31 councils for the defense of doctoral and candidate dissertations at the Herzen State Pedagogical Univ., where dissertations are defended in 81 scientific specialties.

There are more than 30 scientific schools at the Herzen University, conducting fundamental and applied research and training highly qualified scientific and scientific-pedagogical personnel in various branches of science.

Scientific research at the Herzen State Pedagogical Univ. is coordinated within the framework of 37 main scientific areas (in 21 branches of science out of 25 existing ones).