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
Space Habitat Monitoring
As people travel into deep space, their dwellings will need to self-monitor to ensure the safety of the inhabitants. What measurements are needed and how can that information be presented to astronauts in a helpful way? These questions (and others) can be taken in many directions, all centered around how humans can better interact with their "smart home".
Engineering, Computer Science
Robotic Grasping Simulation using Python
In this project, the student will use Python to implement a simulation of an industrial robotic arm and end effector picking an object from a bin and placing it in another bin. Although this task may sound trivial, it will require skills in mathematical optimization, control theory, and rigid-body kinematics. The student will utilize Drake, a Python library for model-based design and verification of robotics, developed at MIT and the Toyota Research Institute. Depending on progress, this project can go as deep as desired --- for example, by adding algorithms for motion planning, pose estimation, and impedance control.
Engineering, AI/ML
Cooperation in multi-robot systems
What’s better than one robot? How about a bunch of robots working together! This field of research is known as “multi-robot systems” or “swarm robotics”- using a group or of coordinated robots to complete complex tasks. What are the benefits and challenges in coordinating a group of robots? For a group where all the robots are a single type vs. a group of multiple different types of robots, how do these considerations change, and how do they stay the same? This project will explore the current state of the art of multi-robot systems, compare the benefits and challenges of various robot systems, and make recommendations on their usage.
Arts, Engineering, Computer Science
The Real Life Theranos: Point-of-Care Diagnostics in Under 15 Minutes
Over 170 million cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed since the beginning of the pandemic. A particularly difficult challenge necessary for curbing the pandemic has been the rapid diagnosis of coronavirus in patients. In this project you will learn to compare the different methods used for coronavirus and how this can be applied to the field of molecular diagnostics. You will explore the steps invovled in creating fully integrated diagnostic devices and the cutting-edge research used to detect disease in under 15 minutes!
Engineering
Investing in technology startups
People often talk about the latest market opportunity, new groundbreaking technologies, and bringing a great team together. If you're an investor, how do you choose between multiple exciting opportunities? Together we'll explore the kinds of discussions that happen behind closed doors, and explore a few investment opportunities ourselves!
Physics, Engineering, Math, Business, Finance
Image analysis and generating 3D printing trajectories
Many software packages exist to convert clinical data acquired via MRI or CT scan to 3D models and subsequently 3D printing instructions. While these software packages can be useful, they often are accompanied with bugs that are difficult to troubleshoot. Developing the skill of generating printed structure trajectories could be useful for future 3D printing work.
Engineering, Math
Exploring Biomaterials for Women's Health Applications
I've worked on numerous projects related to women's health applications including drug delivery in ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and pregnancy. In these research spaces, there are always many questions about sex-based differences in drug delivery, how pregnancy can affect therapeutic interventions, and how to better design biomaterials for women's health. This project would look to explore the ongoing research related to biomaterials specifically utilized in women's health applications. The student can decide how to further narrow the topic depending on their interests (i.e., biomaterials for pregnancy, drug delivery in the female reproductive tract, etc). This work could focus on either preclinical or clinical research related to women's health as the student reviews current literature and/or clinical studies exploring this topic. The student could then create a written report with schematics-- a scientific review, commentary, or blogpost-- on the observed data and any emerging trends that seem relevant. The overall goals would be to get more comfortable finding and reading scientific articles and to practice summarizing these different sources cohesively.
Biotech, Biology, Engineering
Foundations of CRISPR-screening
In this project, you will survey the blooming field of CRISPR-screening and utilizing Cas9 to do high-throughput assays. You will write a scientific research paper in the style of Nature Biotechnology or create a more fun way to explore your newfound knowledge.
Cancer
Write a Review Paper on Exciting New Tissue Engineering Topics
Students would learn about the state of the art cell types and scaffolds that researchers use to create organs for the human body. This project would help students find, understand, and comprehend tissue engineering academic papers. This newfound knowledge could be written into a short review paper.
Biotech, Biology, Engineering, Chemistry
Improved Bone Screws for Fracture Fixation
Bone screws for fracture fixation are typically fabricated from rigid or elastic materials such as metal alloys, which offer limited flexibility. However, bone tissue is a nonlinear viscoelastic material that can undergo significant mechanical deformation during movement or weight-bearing activities. The use of traditional metal screws may cause damage to the surrounding bone tissue and limit the potential for healing. Furthermore, bone screws are often repurposed for vastly different types of fractures, rather than being optimized for specific applications. By first characterizing the fracture site and surrounding tissue, and then designing a technology tailored to the particular injury, bone screws may be more adaptable and offer better support to the fracture site.
Cancer, Engineering, Medicine
Review of Quantum Advantage for LISQ Applications
Due to recent technological advances the paradigm of noisy intermediate scale quantum computing (NISQ) is being abandoned in favor of a regime which focuses on small numbers of logically protected qubits. There has been work on NISQ quantum advantage and reviews of its achievability, but it would be interesting to look at the classes of algorithms where there would be a quantum advantage (simulations of materials, shor's algorithm, etc.) and see which of these might realistically be attainable with a few hundred logical qubits using simulations or a theoretical analysis - or at least try to make a strong case, if hard evidence is difficult to come by. A review paper on this subject could be publishable.
Physics, Computer Science, Math
3D Organ Engineering
Tissue Engineering. Regenerative Medicine. Stem Cells. Organ Transplants. In this exercise, we will explore the principles of engineering tissues and organs from the bottom up. Students will learn the nuances of building a tissue of their choice using the latest bioengineering techniques that are currently available. At the end of the exercise, students will be able to (i) understand the underlying biological and engineering principles of 3D Organ Engineering, (ii) create a tangible project that attempts to tackle a current limitation in 3D Organ Engineering, and (iii) create a short presentation and written proposal on said project.
Biotech
Education Gone Viral!
Produce a multimedia article about how viruses work - the article could include animations or stop motion videos or drawings, plus an explanation about the ways viruses function and an explanation of current virus research.
Cancer
Who's a Good Dog? Classifying pet species with Machine Learning.
Dive into computer vision using convolutional neural nets in order to classify pet species. From a Saint Bernard to a Chihuahua, how well can you train a computer to predict the correct species of dog or cat? We'll use the available Oxford-IIIT Pet Dataset and Pytorch to build a model and experiment with hyperparameters.
Engineering, Computer Science, AI/ML
Soft Robotic Grasping Design Review
Soft robotics has become a very active research area in the last 10 years, primarily because of it's ability to interact with delicate objects, such as humans, animals and soft materials that are otherwise difficult to manipulate with classical rigid robots. In this project, you will explore the world of soft robotic graspers, how they work, and the different design principles at play. This will involve a thorough exploration of recent literature, culminating on writing a paper focusing on a specific type of grasping and its pros and cons. If students wish to, they may also fabricate their own gripper of a chosen type with improved design features.
Engineering, Computer Science, Quantitative
Mapping the Effects of War on Maternal and Child Health
How can we quantify the impact of war on the health of children and their mothers? In this project, the student will be learn and apply Geographic Information System (GIS) tools, Python data science skills, and large publically-avaliable datasets on global conflicts to generate an interactive in-depth map that depicts and tells the story of how war impacts maternal and child health. This project will provide the student with a deeper comprehension of how data visualization can guide decisions in foreign policy, global health, and human rights.
Computer Science, Public Health
Trash Reef
Develop a way to process waste and turn it into coral reef bases that you could sink to encourage the growth of reef and fish populations in the gulf of Mexico and other bodies of water.
Engineering
Production of Novel Bioadhesives for Tissue Engineering and Therapeutic Applications
Designing new bioadhesives that can be used clinically to eliminate the need to suturing and invasive surgical procedures. This is beneficial because it greatly decreases the risk of nosocomial infections and the other risks involved with invasive procedures. Some complications with this technology is the ability to use hydrogels inside the body directly on tissue surfaces. A potential project idea is figuring out how to make the bioadhesives more compatible for diverse environments.
Physics, Math
Create an NBA trade simulator
Scrape NBA statistics using python or google sheets and basketballreference.com, identify a metric to compare different players on different teams, and run a statistical hypothesis test to determine if the teams involved would accept the potential trade! Then create an interface to run your simulator and view the result
Engineering, Economics, Math
Characterizing the immune response to a novel bacteria
Mice will be infected with a newly discovered bacteria, and changes to the populations of major types of immune cells will be measured via histology. For a more detailed characterization, flow cytometry and/or scRNA-seq could also be used to look for more specific changes in the immune system. Based on these results, depleting antibodies will be used to assess the function of each component of the immune response.
Biology
