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.
- AI/ML
- Animation
- Arts
- Biology
- Biotech
- Business
- Cancer
- Chemistry
- Cognitive
- Computer Science
- Creative Writing
- Dance
- Dentistry
- Economics
- Engineering
- Entomology
- Environmental Science
- Ethics
- Fashion
- Finance
- Game Design
- Healthcare
- History
- Illustration
- Languages
- Linguistics
- Literature
- Math
- Medicine
- Music
- Neuroscience
- Nutrition
- Organizational Leadership
- Philanthropy
- Philosophy
- Photography
- Physics
- Psychiatry
- Psychology
- Public Health
- Quantitative
- Social
- Social Science
- Sports Analytics
- Statistics
- Surgery
Launch Your First Digital Marketing Campaign
Attention is our most valuable asset. More so than money or time because people with money want more time, and people with time want to spend it wisely. As a marketer, your job is to get the right people's attention and get them to take a specific action that you want, but you'll only be successful if you can make them want it too. The tools at your disposal matter less than the substance, but in this project, I will teach you one or more of the fundamentals of digital marketing depending on your goals. The options include: - Crafting your ideal user profiles (through demographics, psychographics, and user stories) - conducting competitor analysis - crafting your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) - copywriting - sales copywriting - creative (graphic design and/or videography) - email marketing - social media marketing - content marketing - website design - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) By the end of it, you will know how to identify the right target market full of your ideal users, create a compelling pitch or hook to grab their attention and move them through your sales and marketing funnel to convert them into customers.
Business, Finance
Real Effects of Environmental Disclosures
An important strain of accounting research examines whether accounting has "real effects". For example, researchers may investigate whether accounting regulations affect firms' investment decisions, employees' career decisions or consumers' purchasing decisions. Many accounting regulations require firms to disclose additional information about their operations in the financial statements. For this reason, accounting researchers are particularly interested in the real effects of disclosures. Recently, Google started disclosing the carbon dioxide emissions for flights in its search engine results, as well as whether those emissions are above or below average for a flight with that departure airport and destination. In this research project, I examine whether this environmental disclosure effects individual's flight choices.
Quantitative, Business, Organizational Leadership
Website Building (for a Business or Other Purposes)
I will help guide you on how to build your own website via Wix or a free online website builder. At the end of our sessions, you will have a landing page for your project.
Biotech, Music, Business
Blood Lead Levels from an Rural-Urban Epidemiological Lens
Using CA blood lead level data from the past decade, I've partnered with a colleague to descriptively represent the current state of lead contaminated water, particularly in the state of California, and how that issue disproportionately impacts areas approaching greater rurality. The data used is openly published and underwent an audit.
Music, Social Science, Business
Start a podcast
Do you have a podcast idea but are not sure where to start? Let's flesh out your idea and set you in the right direction to go from idea to launch.
Computer Science, Business
Begin a Product Portfolio
Identify a problem in your school, home or community that you would like to solve. We will collaborate using design thinking frameworks to create a proposal for a solution. If interested, we can post your solution to a personal product portfolio page. Possible final product: PowerPoint Presentation; portfolio website page. This is especially relevant for students interested in technology and product design.
Business
Summer side business
For the entrepreneurially-minded, looking for a side business - let's take your idea (or find an idea) and make sure you know how to obtain customers, keep track of financial records, and create a sustainable schedule.
Computer Science, Business
Healthcare Research Project with Statistics and Data
We will first examine the broad and diverse definitions of "health". Subsequently, we will explore decision making with respect to health from economic, critical, and social theories; who should be responsible for financing the provision of healthcare; and what tradeoffs exists among different modes of healthcare financing systems. At this stage, the project is more philosophical and theoretical in which I want the student to wrestle with these topics and come to their own opinion about health and the financing and provision of healthcare with me as guide they can lean on for assistance and facilitation of critical problem solving. Once the student understands theoretical frameworks as they relate to these topics, I would like to introduce different methods and statistical analyses used to understand the relationship between predictor variables and health outcome variables. I will go over basic research methodology, biostatics, and coding. In the third stage of the project, the student will come up with a research question and hypothesis and we will use a publicly available health data set to test that hypothesis.
Economics, Healthcare, Business, Statistics
Fan Cost Index & Attendance
As COVID comes to an end, a major concern of all major professional sports league (NBA, MLB, NFL & NHL) is the return of max attendance throughout their stadiums and venues. Yet this recovery has not come as quickly as some may have hoped and that can be due to a multitude of reasons. One major variable that would be interesting to look into is the cost of attending these events as it seems these events never go down in price. Cost of attendance could be a major deterrent for fans as they need to decide where discretionary money is spent. Analyzing the cost of attending sporting events by league, team, and region could be a major insight into why attendance may be stagnant.
History, Sports Analytics, Business, Finance
How does ambiguity/ uncertainty aversion affect our decision making and life choices?
I'd love to explore with you business and economics phenomena that help us understand how humans think and behave, such as ambiguity (uncertainty) aversion, altruism, anchoring and framing, overconfidence effect, and more! We don't have to limit ourselves to behavioral economics though - we can certainly explore other topics from economics, business, technology, or other related fields. During our collaboration, you will learn: 1. how to research and educate yourself on chosen topic (I will help you understand it in depth during our sessions), 2. how to critically think about the concepts and opposing views, 3. how to apply business and economics concepts into practice through your project and beyond, and 4. how to convey your exploration and knowledge through an essay, research paper, and/ or a slick presentation. We will gather information and educate ourselves on chosen topics through researching academic papers and essays, reading books, exploring online courses and Ted Talks, and informational chats with industry experts. We will define your goal together at the beginning of our partnership. In my mind, the goal could include writing an essay or paper that can be later shared during your college or internship applications, or creating a “Ted Talk” presentation that you can present at your school, conference, or actual Ted Talk!
Economics, Business, Finance
Understanding the Future of Real Estate
The real estate industry is constantly changing. Real estate will always have a positive impact in the world with evolving high-tech software and increasing demand in jobs. Since this industry is wide-spread, there is much to offer while learning about a unique field of work. The knowledge and skills you will learn from this project is invaluable while crating an essay, research paper, presentation, and more.
Biology, Nutrition, Business, Finance
A Deep Dive into Social Media and Consumer Behavior (shopping, brand loyalty, cancel culture, and more).
Are you curious about how social media (e.g., TikTok) affects shopping behavior among teenagers and young adults? Do you ever wonder what factors lead to greater online shopping? Or what makes certain products more appealing than others? What causes businesses to flourish? Many of our everyday questions can lead us to scientific inquiries. You can pursue these topics either in the form of a scientific review-style paper on a topic of your choice or an independent survey study. A scientific review will teach you how to find, access, and critically analyze existing scientific literature and how to assemble primary literature into a scientific review. You will gain skills in writing and editing, as well as an in-depth knowledge of your chosen research topic. An independent study will show you how to design a survey, collect and analyze data, and report your findings.
Social Science, Business
Review Paper: Electrifying Transportation
How do we incentivize municipalities and residents to invest in electric transportation? This project will look into the infrastructural improvements, marketing, financial tools, and partnerships necessary to incentivize and implement electrification of public and private transportation.
Business
Ever wondered how a summer internship can help students?
We can work together to design a research project that looks at how summer internships affect high school students. Do they experience increased aspirations to pursue a certain career? Are they more motivated to do well at school? Do they get better grades? This project will offer you the chance to learn how to design a survey, collect data, conduct interviews, analyze data, and improve your academic writing style. I am open to working on this topic, or any other economics topic(s) of your choosing! For a previous research project, I worked with my advisor on a similar topic. Here is what we found: Recently, policymakers and researchers have explored how time spent outside of the classroom, including early work experience, can affect educational outcomes and reduce inequality across racial and socioeconomic groups. Although research has demonstrated that high-intensity work-based learning programs improve high school graduation and post-secondary enrollment, little is known about the effects of stand-alone private sector employment experiences on student outcomes. We study a unique program that brokers employer-paid summer job internships for Boston public school youth across 150 private sector firms in a variety of industries such as healthcare, finance, biotechnology, higher education, and real estate. Using data from school administrative records, we employ both fixed effects and matching models to estimate the impact of receiving a private sector placement on both high-school and post-secondary outcomes. Both models show similar impacts on outcomes that can be measured repeatedly over time with significant improvements in high school attendance and course failures associated with having had a private sector placement during the summer. Furthermore, we use our matching model to explore outcomes that occur only once, finding that private sector job experience increases standardized test taking as well as the likelihood of on-time high school graduation and college enrollment. These results suggest that private sector employers have an important role to play in the “ecosystem” of summer jobs, beyond government sponsored programs, to support experiences that help prepare youth for both educational and career pathways into adulthood.
Languages, Economics, Math, Business, Statistics
Policy projects
How competitive are industries where brands are all owned by 1 or 2 companies? What is the impact of removing gas tax on gas prices? Will firms stop being innovative if prices are capped for their products?
Economics, Business, Statistics
Review Paper: The Economics of Climate Change
An in-depth look at current economic models and how they contribute to excessive industry emissions, and suggestions on how to revise them to fit the changing environmental and financial climate.
Business
Gender bias in the news
Using natural language processing you can explore how men and women (or more broadly gender as a whole) is discussed in various forms of literature to identify particular biases. A clear example would be to explore gender-biases in coverage by regional newspapers both domestically and internationally
Biology, Computer Science, Business
Start Your Business!
Have an idea? Looking to grow this into an actual business? As an entrepreneur and Harvard teaching fellow in management, I'll help you (1) create a business plan using relevant frameworks, (2) find a market willing to pay for your product or service, (3) respond to customer feedback to grow a strong, successful company.
Literature, Healthcare, Business
Rising Ocean Levels due to Climate Change
Global warming is causing global mean sea level to rise in two ways. First, glaciers and ice sheets worldwide are melting and adding water to the ocean. Second, the volume of the ocean is expanding as the water warms. The negative effects are coastlines will retreat, destabilizing coastal ecosystems, contamination of groundwater, coastal flooding, and much more. This project will allow to learn more about the global ecosystem and create a project of the student's desire to understand how the world is battling climate change.
Biology, Nutrition, Business, Finance
Examining Social Stressors Among Students
Social stressors among students, such as a lack of friends, being in different classes, interpersonal conflicts, and peer pressure, can adversely affect their mental health. Exploring the impact of these stressors and potential factors that amplify or mitigate their effects could form the basis of a research paper, slide deck, or podcast. Quantitative or qualitative data analysis could be utilized depending on the student's interest area. In addition to examining the impact of social stressors among students, there are other avenues of research that can be explored. For example, a student could delve into the coping mechanisms employed by students to deal with social stressors, and how these strategies affect their overall well-being. Another research direction could involve examining the role of social support networks in mitigating the negative effects of social stressors on students' mental health. Furthermore, exploring the long-term consequences of experiencing social stressors during the student years and its potential implications for adulthood could be another intriguing research area to explore.
Literature, Creative Writing, Business, Finance
