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Browse project ideas by Polygence mentors
Literature Review: The Science Behind Chronic Pain
Why does pain sometimes outlast the injury? In this review, you will investigate how the brain processes pain and why fear of movement keeps athletes stuck. Additionally, you can explore which methods of therapy for chronic pain have the strongest evidence behind them, such as exercise rehabilitation, mindfulness exercises, or pain education. You'll learn to find credible studies, judge their validity and reliability, and compare papers with varying information to create a well written literature review.
Healthcare
Science for Athletes (podcast/video series)
Each episode answers one of many questions that athletes frequently ask. For instance, “Why do I get sore two days later?” can be answered in an interview style episode with scientific evidence.
Healthcare
Sports Medicine Myths: Which Ones Hold Up? (podcast/video series)
Take popular claims from athletic media like “no pain, no gain,” “stretching prevents injury,” or “cracking joints causes arthritis” and grade each one against the scientific evidence.
Healthcare
Is Your Smartwatch Lying to You? (research project)
Smartwatches ensure accurate heart rate tracking, but is this false advertising? In this project, you will put wearable tech to the test with teens who own a smartwatch or fitness tracker. Participants will complete short, low-intensity trials at different activity levels, such as resting, walking, and jogging. You will then compare the watch’s reading to a manual pulse count. By the end of the study, you will be able to explain the advantages and disadvantages of using a smart watch.
Healthcare
Can Understanding Pain Make It Hurt Less? (research project)
Pain can last long after an injury heals. For young athletes, fear of re-injury can discourage them from competing. Could learning how pain works change how much it controls their beliefs? In this project, high school athletes will be separated in two groups. One group will watch a pain science video and the other group will watch a video about an unrelated topic. Afterward, both groups will complete a questionnaire on fear of movement and beliefs about pain. If watching a video can shift how athletes think about pain, it could be a cost effective and simple way to help young people recover with more confidence.
Healthcare
Snooze Time, For What? How Sleeping Less Than Eight Hours Affects the Adolescent Brain and Body
Areas of guidance for this project include neuroscience, sleep, adolescent brain development, learning and memory, and mental and physical health. Adolescents aged 13 to 18 are recommended to sleep 8 to 10 hours a night, yet many regularly sleep less than 8 hours on school nights. In this project, the student reviews the research on what happens when adolescents fall below that minimum, and asks which effects are most consistently supported, which are still debated, and why getting enough sleep can be especially difficult during the teenage years, when the body clock naturally shifts later but school often starts early. The student will learn how sleep supports memory consolidation, attention, and emotional regulation, and how to read and compare scientific studies critically. They will build skills in searching research databases, defining clear criteria for which studies to include, organizing findings from many sources, and distinguishing strong, repeated evidence from a single interesting result. Information gathering will be a structured review of published research and trusted health sources. The student will search for studies on adolescent sleep duration and outcomes, screen them against criteria they set in advance, and sort the findings into areas such as learning and school performance, mood and stress, physical health and metabolism, and safety, including sports injuries and drowsy driving. They will also note differences in study design, sample size, and how sleep was measured, since self reported sleep and device measured sleep do not always agree. The student will finish with a scientific review paper or poster that synthesizes the evidence on sleeping less than 8 hours, a summary table comparing the main effects and the strength of evidence for each, and an infographic for fellow students that explains, in plain language, why sleep matters for the teenage brain and what the research actually shows.
Neuroscience
Friend, Foe, or Both? The Two Faces of Zinc in the Nervous System
Areas of guidance for this project include neuroscience, neurochemistry, and brain health, particularly how the brain tightly regulates essential trace elements and what happens when that balance is lost. Zinc is necessary for normal brain function, yet its effects depend strongly on amount, location, and timing. In this project, the student investigates zinc as a double edged sword in the brain. Too much zinc released during intense neuronal activity can contribute to excitotoxic injury, while too little zinc can interfere with processes linked to neurogenesis, DNA repair, and cellular defense. The student asks how the same element can be both protective and damaging, and what determines which outcome occurs. The student will learn how neurons communicate, how the brain maintains chemical balance, and how scientists weigh evidence when studies appear to point in opposite directions. They will build skills in reading primary research, comparing experimental models, organizing findings by zinc level, brain context, and outcome, and explaining a complex idea accurately to a non specialist audience. Information gathering will center on a structured review of published studies in cells, animals, and humans. The student will record the source of zinc, the amount or condition studied, the brain region or process affected, and whether the reported effect was beneficial, harmful, or dependent on context. The student will finish with a scientific review paper or poster and an original evidence map or visual model showing where zinc supports brain health, where it becomes harmful, and what questions remain unresolved.
Neuroscience
Can we love AI?
This project would focus on the ethics of relationships and artificial intelligence. We will read and discuss the work of philosophers who work on personal identity, relationship ethics, neuroscience, and AI. We will discuss what it would mean to love an AI agent, and whether an AI agent could love a human being. We will evaluate some of the ethical consequences of these issues. Students will have the option to evaluate these ideas with respect to familial relationships (can we replace parents or children with AI?), friendships, or romantic relationships. Alternatively, we could evaluate whether certain social/work relationships like teachers, mentors, therapists, or pets etc. could effectively replace human relationships of the same kind, and what the ethical outcomes of those might be. This project type would not involve any coding, nor a strong background in computer science or artificial intelligence. These ideas will be evaluated through a philosophical lens. The outcome of this project will be a research paper aimed at a high school academic journal.
Philosophy
Modern Technology's Impacts on the Environment and the Effectiveness of Renewable Energy Systems
In this project, I mentored a student in exploring how different methods of electricity production affect the environment and how we can reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. We investigated renewable energy technologies, carbon capture methods, and emerging solutions for reducing greenhouse gases. A key part of the project was comparing the environmental benefits, costs, and energy requirements of different approaches to understand which solutions are the most practical and sustainable. This project is a great opportunity for students interested in climate change, renewable energy, and engineering to explore real-world environmental challenges, analyze scientific research, and identify promising technologies that could help build a cleaner future.
AI/ML, Engineering, Computer Science, Business
Developing a Novel Robot Localization Algorithm Using Low-Cost Sensors
In this project, I mentored a student who found a simpler way for robots to track their location using everyday low-cost sensors. Traditional methods often need careful measurements of wheel positions and still struggle with sideways drift. My student showed that for certain wheel setups those measurements aren’t necessary, then built a clean arc-based algorithm that reconstructs the robot’s path while naturally correcting for drift. The results were strong enough that we turned the work into a research article, which has been submitted to a journal for publication.
AI/ML, Engineering, Computer Science, Business