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

Biomechanics of Concussions

Each year between 1.7 and 3.0 million sports or recreation related concussions occur. More strikingly 2 in 10 high school athletes that play contact sports will get a concussion, and 5 in 10 concussions go unreported or undetected. In this project we can learn: - The biomechanics underlying concussions - The timeline of effects within the brain following a concussion - The long lasting impact of a single mild traumatic brain injury - Ways which we can improve athlete’s knowledge of how to prevent a concussion and what to do and expect when recovering from a concussion

Neuroscience, Psychology

Laura

Å Guide to Discussing Wellness and Mental Health With Your Family

Mental health begins with family. Families are often the first detectors of mental illness and are instrumental for successful mental healthcare for most patients. However, the dynamics of mental health within a family are extremely complicated, especially when factoring cultural and generational backgrounds. For some, conversations within family about wellness and mental illness may come natural and easy - for many others, this is a topic to avoid with a 50-foot pole. Join me on an adventure to investigate how we can work at destigmatizing mental health within some of our most intimate interpersonal connections. The outcome of this project is variable - I could see this produced as an opinion paper backed with primary research to being a small study supported by creating a survey and sampling classmates.

Psychiatry, Biology, Neuroscience, Business

Nathan

Social Media and Adolescent Mental Health: A Comprehensive Study

This research project aims to investigate the impact of social media usage on the mental health of adolescents. The objective is to explore the correlation between social media habits, such as usage patterns, content consumption, and interaction frequency, and mental health parameters, including stress, anxiety, self-esteem, and overall well-being. Through this study, the student seeks to shed light on the complex relationship between social media and mental health in young individuals.

Healthcare

Geoffrey

High School Health Independence

Adolescents often have difficulty managing medical problems as they transition from pediatric to adult care. In this project, we will work together to help improve high school students' understanding of their role in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Biology, Ethics, Public Health, Medicine

Margaret

Regenerative Medicine Treatment Discovery

Have you ever wanted to create your own drug? Ever wanted to cure a disease? Stem cells have the application to regenerate and proliferate all cell types. Depending on the tissue environment/cell type, stem cells have the capacity to replenish the cells in order to target and treat several diseases. Stem cells have strong applications for treatment but contain several ethical concern, which can be circumvented with new technologies. The use of these stem cells therefore can be applied to all disease types. In this project, we can create a disease target and formulating a process to research the drug and finding its application in the area of research.

Cancer, Neuroscience, Medicine

Marc

Literature Review

Projects of this sort serve as an introduction to academic literature topic and help students develop the skills necessary to find and incorporate high-quality sources into subsequent research. Commonly, literature reviews include the reading and reporting on at least 30 academic publications. The highest quality literature reviews also categorize and synthesize current research findings and gaps and highlight areas for future research. By performing this literature review, students come to a deep understanding of the narrow topic covered by the review, and gain experience in interpreting and synthesizing data from various sources. Students will also gain experience formulating a paper in scholarly format. If the final product is of high quality, I can assist students in submitting it for publication by a high-school research journal. Exemplar topics include: Barriers to vaccine uptake, Interventions to reduce emotional trauma from vaccinations, Use of alternative and supplementary therapies to complement medical management of headaches, The changing prenatal age of viability, and so forth

Chemistry, Medicine

Coy

Student-Run Clinic

In this project I will help you organize a student-run clinic in your school or university. From a small diabetes screening service (as more and more young people are at risk) to a multidisciplinary group tackling the health issues that are most important in your school and community.

Neuroscience

Ana

What is Growing on my Face? A Look in a Microscopic Mirror

In this project, you will learn about the microbiome and the roles it plays in our daily lives, focusing on the skin. You will then analyze the relevant literature and write a scientific review paper assessing the role the skin microbiome plays in common skin diseases, such as acne, psoriasis, rosacea, lupus etc., and how different treatments people use can change the microbiome and the presentation of the disease, for better or for worse.

Medicine

Enze

Tranexamic Acid as a treatment for drug-induced angioedema

High blood pressure is one of the most common conditions in adults worldwide and medications such as lisinopril are commonly used to treat it. However, some patients develop a dangerous side effect called "angioedema" when they take this lisinopril, which can cause serious complications. In this project we review tranexamic acid as it is used medically to treat such patients and provide rescue therapy for drug-induced angioedema.

Cancer, Healthcare

Gaurav

Natural methods to help repair brain cell damage

Compile a list of sources of independent methods to improve recovery from neuronal injury and then create a lifestyle plan that people can use to implement all the methods. This can be applicable for people recovering from a stroke, car crash, or CTE from sports induced head injuries.

Biology, Neuroscience

Jobie

Intro to using scientific datasets

Public bioinformatic data resources such as those provided by The Cancer Genome Atlas and DEPMAP are widely used by almost all researchers studying human disease. These datasets help give us insight into what genes and programs might be the most important for certain cancers and can give us ideas for what to target therapeutically. In this project, we will use the programming language R to analyze public data to answer a specific research question regarding cancer genes and dependencies.

Biology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Chemistry

Annamarie

Magic Chalkboard

Create a program to track a fingertip or pen in a video and then draw its path over the original video.

AI/ML, Medicine

Nick

Investigating the Impact of Exercise on Mental Health in Teenagers

This research project focuses on exploring the relationship between physical activity and mental well-being in teenagers. The objective is to understand how regular exercise influences mental health parameters such as stress levels, mood, and overall emotional well-being in adolescents. By conducting this study, the student aims to contribute valuable insights to the fields of both exercise science and mental health.

Healthcare

Geoffrey

Gene therapy for neurodevelopmental disease

For this project, a student will choose a genetic cause of neurodevelopmental disease and learn about the main symptoms of that condition. They will then research the different types of gene therapies that are currently available and come up with the best plan for using gene therapy to treat that condition. They will describe how the gene therapy could be tested pre-clinically (in cell and animal models) and then clinically in human patients.

Neuroscience, Medicine

Carin

Pollution and Eye Disease

How does environmental pollution affect eye disease, especially myopia? In recent decades, there is an increasing prevalence of myopia, especially in pediatric populations. There are plenty of theories of why this is occurring, and many of these theories involve socio-environmental factors. Some pollutants have been associated with increasing rates of myopia amongst populations.

Public Health, Medicine

Shefali

Looking inside your gut: understanding the structure of human gut microbial enzymes

In this project you will learn the basics you need to do structural biology and bioinformatics. You will investigate an enzyme of your choice that is known to exist in the human gut. Once you pick an enzyme that interests you, you will model this real life enzyme in 3D using structural biology and bioinformatics techniques. You will then investigate and model the compounds known to bind in the active site of this enzyme. This project will help you gain skills in structural biology, bioinformatics, enzymology, modeling of biomolecules, and making figures for publication.

Biology, Chemistry

Violet

Do maternal medications influence fetal development?

Pregnant people are not typically included in clinical trials of new drugs due to an abundance of caution regarding effects to the fetus. However, this has resulted in a lack of information on which drugs can be safely tolerated by the fetus, especially when they are essential to the mother's health (i.e. antidepressants, antibiotics, blood pressure medication). One recent example is the COVID-19 vaccine, which was not recommended for pregnant individuals until several months after being approved for all adults, despite COVID-19 being more severe during pregnancy. In this project, the student will conduct a thorough literature search of all medications which do and do not cross the placenta in order to create a database for other researchers. The output of this project will be the online database and a written report.

Biology, Medicine

Andrea

Gene Delivery Applications

As we enter a new era of technology, there are some major shifts occuring in the space of clinical medicine and biotechnology. The biggest one we currently see is the shift to more personalized medicine. This is a field of engineering, biology and clinical medicine that focuses on ways to leverage existing technologies for personalized therapies. The most prominent example of this is the use of CRISPR to cure and deliver therapies to certain patients. Our project would entail a large data analysis of the epidemeology of genetic diseases, the cost they pose to patients, their families and the US government and a proposal for ways genetically engineering therapies could pose as solutions. I would like to see a student use existing software to design specific genetically engineering systems that could be tested in a labratory setting.

Biology, Engineering, Chemistry, Medicine

Abhishek

Advanced Drug Technologies

Explore state of the art drug platforms and their potential to revolutionize the way patients are treated for cancer, heart diseases, infections, autoimmunity, and more.

Medicine

Naedum

Learning a New Skill from the Scientific Literature

I'm happy to work with you to learn about anything you'd like in the realm of data science/computer science, engineering, health care, biology, or policy/politics - I would work with the student to identify a topic of interest and critically read the academic literature. The final product would likely be a literature review, or an explanatory product such as a podcast, tech talk, Youtube video etc. Here are a few examples to get you started - but I'm happy to work on anything you choose and help you refine the project! (1) Studying machine learning algorithms - We would read computer science journal articles together and implement the algorithms we're reading about. Then the student could prepare an article or video explaining their favorite algorithm. (2) Learning about biological research - We would identify a topic (epidemiology of coronaviruses, for example) and read journal articles together. Then the student could prepare a literature review on the studies we read, or a podcast educating the public on their findings.

Biology, Quantitative, AI/ML, Medicine

Akshaya