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Browse project ideas by Polygence mentors
Wetlands, Youth Advocacy, and Environmental Economics in East Africa
This project examines how wetlands support communities, economies, and climate resilience, with a focus on East Africa. Students will explore the economic and environmental value of wetlands, including flood protection, water access, biodiversity, tourism, agriculture, and public health. Rather than treating conservation as only an environmental issue, the project frames wetlands as public assets shaped by policy decisions, community action, and competing development pressures. Students may investigate case studies such as Manguo Wetland in Kenya, examining how urban growth, land use, pollution, deforestation, and weak enforcement affect fragile ecosystems. The project will also consider the role of youth advocacy, local organizations, and public institutions in protecting natural resources. Students will learn how to ask practical policy questions, such as whether conservation programs create economic benefits, how governments can balance development and ecological protection, and how community voices can influence environmental decision making. Through guided research, students will work with policy reports, environmental data, case studies, and academic sources to evaluate the relationship between sustainability and economic development. By the end of the project, students will be able to explain how environmental economics can help communities protect natural resources while also supporting livelihoods, equity, and long term resilience.
Economics
AI, Climate, and Health Equity: How Technology Can Help Communities Prepare for Global Challenges
This project explores how artificial intelligence can be used to address major global challenges at the intersection of climate change, public health, and economic inequality. Students will examine how climate related risks such as extreme heat, air pollution, flooding, food insecurity, and disease outbreaks affect communities differently, especially in low income, rural, or under resourced regions. Rather than treating AI as only a technical tool, this project asks how technology can be designed and governed in ways that are ethical, equitable, and useful for real public policy decisions. Students may investigate how AI is being used to predict health risks, map vulnerable populations, improve disaster response, strengthen healthcare delivery, or support climate adaptation planning. The project will also examine the risks of AI, including biased data, unequal access to digital tools, privacy concerns, and the possibility that technology driven solutions may overlook local knowledge or community needs. Through guided research, students will learn how to evaluate policy reports, academic studies, case studies, and data sources from global institutions, governments, and public health organizations. Students will develop a clear research question, compare different policy approaches, and assess whether AI can meaningfully improve health and sustainability outcomes. By the end of the project, students will be able to explain how economics, technology, healthcare policy, and global affairs intersect in one of the most urgent policy questions of the future.
Economics
Investigating mutations associated with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH)
In this project I helped a student identify mutations that are likely to be related to FH by looking at genetic data from patients. We looked at what genes the mutations were located in, what the mutations looked like, and what biological processes and molecular functions may be associated with the development of this disease.
Biology
Health Behavior PSA
Choosing a public health issue, design a campaign to help address the issue by leveraging health behavior change theory
Public Health, Neuroscience
Resilience Across Development
A potential research project could examine how resilience processes evolve across key developmental periods and whether factors that promote resilience differ across childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood. The mentee could conduct a narrative or systematic review synthesizing evidence on individual (e.g., emotion regulation, cognitive flexibility), interpersonal (e.g., social support, family relationships), and contextual (e.g., school and community resources) factors associated with resilient outcomes following adversity. Particular attention could be given to developmental mechanisms that explain why some youth maintain psychological well-being despite exposure to significant stressors or trauma. This work could identify critical periods for intervention and inform developmentally tailored approaches to resilience promotion.
Psychiatry, Statistics, Psychology
Do People Like You More When You Wear the Same Clothes?
Overconsumption of clothing contributes a large portion to yearly carbon emissions and waste. People intuit that every new occasion they may be photographed at (i.e., wedding, vacation, etc) calls for a new outfit and that it's a bad look to be seen wearing the same outfit. However, new outfits add change and deviation to our visual conception of another person. And a large body of literature (see Mere Exposure Effect) predicts the opposite - that we like things (and people!) that are familiar to us. This suggests that either 1) people may overpredict how much being seen wearing the same outfit is a "bad look" or 2) that the mere-exposure effect and fluency work differently in the domain of fashion. Either insight would be very interesting for Psychology and Consumer journals. This question could be explored through a series of experiments and more naturalistic non-experiments depending on the time and resources of the mentee.
Social, Psychology, Cognitive
Designing and Conducting a Psychology or Neuroscience Research Study
In this project, students would learn how to develop an original research question in psychology or neuroscience and design a study to investigate it. Possible topics include the influence of extracurricular activities on sleep architecture, how access to greenspace affects attention and memory, associations between language and emotional state, adolescent mental health, peer relationships, and social media use. Depending on the student’s interests, background, and available time, projects could involve designing surveys or behavioral experiments, analyzing publicly available datasets, conducting interviews, exploring basic NLP methods, evaluating existing scientific literature to identify gaps in current research, and/or conducting a meta-analysis of published results. Final deliverables could include a literature review, research proposal, pilot dataset analysis, conference-style poster, presentation, or research manuscript. For example, a student interested in language use and emotional state might investigate whether patterns in written language reflect stress or emotional well-being in adolescents. The student could review existing research in psychology and natural language processing (NLP), design interviews or surveys incorporating both self-report mood measures and open-ended written responses, analyze publicly available text data using basic Python-based NLP tools, and create data visualizations in R or Python examining relationships between language use and emotional state.
Statistics, Social, Neuroscience
Designing an Educational Course Informed by Psychology, Neuroscience, and AI Research
How can research in psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence be used to improve education? In this project, students would design an original course, curriculum unit, or educational intervention grounded in scientific research on learning, memory, creativity, attention, motivation, stress, cognitive development, or communication. Students could explore questions such as: How should schools adapt to AI tools like ChatGPT? What teaching methods best support long-term retention and engagement? How do stress, sleep, and social media affect learning? Projects could also incorporate emerging research in natural language processing (NLP), such as how language reflects emotion, attention, or communication style. The final product could include a syllabus, lesson plans, multimedia educational materials, policy recommendations, or a prototype educational resource accompanied by a research-based rationale connecting the design to existing psychological and neuroscience literature. Through the project, students would gain experience in critically evaluating scientific evidence and translating research into practical educational applications.
Statistics, Social, Neuroscience
What is cartilage made of, and why is it important?
Cartilage is a fascinating tissue! It contains unique components structured in a specific way to help it function, cushioning our joints for over 60 years. How is this possible? This could cumulate in a literature review or a presentation/conference format.
Biotech, Engineering
How healthy is the new cartilage tissue which grows to repair an injury?
Cartilage is a unique tissue in that unlike most others, it does not contain blood vessels to facilitate repair after injury. However, after injury, especially after surgical repair, some new tissue may grow. In this research project we could investigate questions like, is this cartilage the same as it was before injury? Does it have the same components, and structure?
Biotech, Engineering