2,893 Inspirational Passion Project Ideas

Turn inspirations into your passion project.

This collection of project ideas, shared by Polygence mentors, is meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Check out some projects

Binding site analysis of potential inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 S2

Therapeutics are needed to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the S2 region is an effective target due to its highly conserved nature. In this project, we will find examples of existing inhibitors targeting this region in similar viruses (i.e. SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV) and dock them to SARS-CoV-2 S2 to understand the binding site interactions. Then, we will re-design these inhibitors to best fit SARS-CoV-2 S2 and improve upon our binding interactions in the final project.

AI/ML

Christine

Computer Recognition of Directed Gestures

After spending a year in virtual classrooms, what are some of the small, nonverbal interactions you miss from in-person conversations? Eye contact & directed gestures are two modalities of communication we usually take for granted, but over Zoom, it can be very hard to tell to whom someone is waving or pointing. What if a computer vision system could help in determining & communicating this information? In this project, you can research methods in computer vision and machine learning that will allow for gesture recognition. Beginning from a standard desktop workstation, you can further experiment with your methods, extending to other poses and contexts.

Music, AI/ML

Ross

Art of Software Design

Have you ever wondered about what makes "good" software? What does it mean to design software systems in ways that they will be easy to maintain, bug-free, and accomplish your goals for the project? Thinking about the essence or philosophy of software design helps answer these questions – if you're interested in the interesting discussions that these questions would yield, you should contact me! However, this project is not all just thinking and discussion – far from it! Mastering the art of software design requires intense practice in designing and implementing your very own system, and that would be the core of this project. We would first meet to pick out a real world system that you want to implement – this could be an algorithm, an app, or a general technology. Then, I would help you with the process of decomposing this large system into manageable pieces to design and implement. You would develop your system in an iterative manner, consisting of a cycle of implementation, review, and revision. By the end, not only will you have implemented a full system on your own from scratch, but you will have also internalized and solidified all the components of what make for a great design and clean, well-documented code

Computer Science, AI/ML

Nicholas

Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence in Python:

This course will distill what I learned teaching Intro to Artificial Intelligence at UC Berkeley (CS188) into functional, small coding problems. I want you to understand what decisions engineers will have to make when designing intelligent systems today. We will work with simple methods like search, constraint satisfaction problems, and linear regression.

AI/ML

Nathan

Predicting Crop Yields from Weather Data

Given data about an area's temperature, humidity, sunshine, and rainfall, how well can you predict how well a given crop will grow? In this machine learning project, you will leverage freely available datasets to create a machine learning model to predict crop yield from weather data. Such a machine learning model could be used to predict crop shortages, and increase food security in the wake of climate change. The results of this research can be written up as a research paper and/or blog post.

AI/ML

Carter

Sentiment analysis of COVID-19 vaccine tweets

Apply data mining to query and synthesize hundreds of thousands of tweets and perform sentiment analysis to compare which COVID-19 vaccine is most promising in different geographic regions. Compare which side effects are most predominant among Pfizer vaccine recipients versus Moderna vaccine recipients. This project would likely culminate in a Medium article which takes the reader through the project from exploratory data analysis to code implementation, and finally a well-articulated discussion of research findings and limitations.

Computer Science, Sports Analytics, Quantitative, AI/ML

Sejal

Investigating Potential Slowdowns in Scientific Progress

Some prominent scientists and innovators have recently suggested the possibility that we have become less efficient at generating new scientific ideas. There are many factors that are claimed to be contributing to this. A recent study has shown that our language (used in books) has been becoming progressively less rational since the 1970s. I could advise a student in using natural language processing tools and data visualization to investigate these claims and perhaps develop new metrics for measuring scientific progress in a given field of interest they have.

Computer Science, AI/ML

Leif

Design of autonomous car using tiny machine learning

1. Beginner research paper. I have worked with students to pursue projects related to machine learning-based Internet of Things. The rapid advancement of technology has led to the emergence of autonomous systems capable of performing various tasks with minimal human intervention. One such area of development is autonomous cars, where tiny machine learning (TinyML) can play a significant role. TinyML involves deploying machine learning models on resource-constrained devices, enabling real-time data processing and decision-making at the edge. This research proposal aims to investigate and develop autonomous cars using TinyML, with a focus on enhancing the quality of auto-driving and support for individuals in various contexts. You will create prototype and publish a conference paper.

Computer Science, AI/ML

Thuan

Machine Learning for Type Checking

Programming languages such as Haskell and OCaml have inferential type systems that can determine the type of an expression without requiring the type to be specified. The type of an expression tells us a lot about its meaning, so training a machine-learning model to determine the type of an expression could be a valuable step toward developing an AI that can read and write programs. Furthermore, I think this could be very useful as a component of an AI that is used to prove programs correct - proof systems generally make heavy use of type-checking, but type-checking can be slow, so a fast AI model that guesses whether or not a proof type-checks would be really important for an automated prover.

Computer Science, AI/ML

Nick

Predicting co-viral infection in SARS-CoV-2 patients and the outcomes of coinfection

While we now have relatively fast diagnostic tests to determine if a patient has COVID-19 or not, patients testing positive may also have another viral infection that may have similar symptoms to COVID-19 and thus may not be detected. An example of this is a patient with both a COVID-19 and a influenza infection. Such coinfections may lead to worst symptoms outcomes and patients may need additional care. As such, it would be useful to have a model to predict if a patient is likely to have a coinfection (and if so, what virus?), and to study the impact of such co-infection. This would allow physicians to allocate different levels and types of resources in order to improve outcomes and the severity of symptoms.

Biology, Cancer, Engineering, AI/ML

Hugh

Using Simple Models of Human Walking to Design Legged Robots

Through computer simulation, this project would analyze some simple dynamic models of how humans walk (spring-loaded inverted pendulum and compass gait). These simulations would be compared to freely available datasets of actual human walking to determine the accuracy of the models. The student would then draw conclusions about how understanding a simple model of walking could inform how we might design a walking robot.

AI/ML

Matthew

Predict patient vulnerability to COVID-19

For this project you will use patient demographics such as age, gender, pre-existing conditions, to build a machine learning model to predict how likely a patient is to suffer severe illness. This model can be deployed to the frontline to triage patients and help direct attention to patients who need it the most.

Economics, AI/ML

Youssef

Foundations of Machine Learning

In this project, you will be introduced to machine learning, starting from basic intuition and moving into mathematical theory. Then, you will apply what you've learned (such as linear regression) to model a relationship of your choice.

Math, AI/ML

Elizabeth

Basic Game AI for Chess, Snake, Blackjack, etc.

This is an intermediate reinforcement learning project involving teaching an AI to win at simple games. There is a lot of fascinating work out there that's been done in this field, and the nice thing is you get to pick exactly how complex you want this project to be. Requires familiarity with: - Game programming - Any programming language - Basic AI structure

Computer Science, Math, AI/ML

Sahil

Image Classification with Computer Vision

Learn to classify images with machine learning and computer vision!

Computer Science, AI/ML

Nick

Seizure Detection

Diagnosing patients with seizure through electroencephalography (EEG) can be a tedious task requiring trained professionals' hours of labor to examing recordings. Many researchers have developed their own methods of seizure detections. Project: Research the various methods, implement them yourself in python/matlab, and write a research paper comparing the performance of a few methods.

Neuroscience, Engineering, AI/ML

Yousuf

AI to write your running playlist

There are plenty of music-generating AI already available, but these are all trying to please everyone and make generically good-sounding music. The idea here is make a music-generating AI for you, to combine industry knowledge and your knowledge on the music you love to make AI that actually sounds good.

Computer Science, Math, AI/ML

Michael

Haptic Feedback Design for a Robotic System

A major component of integrating robotic systems with human controllers is giving humans the proper feedback so that they can feel what is happening with the system. In this project, we would discuss the development of a robotic system with the proper sensing technology to be able to feed that back to a user. This project has numerous possibilities of exploration, including researching the frequency and speeds at which different parts of your body are able to process feedback and the resolution for different types feedback your body has.

Physics, Math, AI/ML

Jerry

Image Generation or Style Transfer

Image generation has come a long way and being able to more properly interact with the models that generate with the images will be very useful for lots of industries. Alternatively converting images from one style into another has long been a rite of passage for artists. Being able to generate more works in the style of artist is itself a valuable tool.

Neuroscience, Computer Science, AI/ML

Steven

Machine learning approaches to better understand disease

The field of genomics is very good at sharing data publicly! Large studies conducted on humans have accrued millions of data points across many publicly-available data sets. These provide an amazing substrate to test the utility of machine learning approaches to better understand disease. A machine learning approach that is good at predicting disease from such data can be very helpful for medical professionals when making diagnoses. In this project, an interested student may start by downloading data from a few studies of interest and using machine learning or statistical learning approaches to identify genes that may contribute to disease. Students can compare various approaches and identify methods that work well in genomic datasets.

Biology, Computer Science, AI/ML, Statistics

Nikhil