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

Patient Reported Motivations for Elective Cosmetic Surgery

The desire to undergo elective cosmetic surgeries is rising exponentially. Botox, fillers, sculpting, and augmentation have attracted mass media attention, dominating the entertainment landscape. Underlying the desire for these procedures are a breadth of motives: gaining an advantage at work, increasing confidence, and feeling more like one's authentic self. Elective cosmetic surgeries are a new, lucrative source of revenue for health centers, but they pose an enormous cost to patients. In this project, you will contribute to important literature which uncovers why people are willing to spend so much money on enhancing their bodies.

Public Health, Finance, Organizational Leadership, Medicine

Michael

DEI in the Workplace

Diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforces drive better business outcomes for organizations. While many organizations have aspired to these goals, progress has been slow. Many are now working to make the necessary changes that create safe and inclusive spaces. Create a strategy that meaningfully builds a workforce that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

Business, Organizational Leadership

Zoe

Using machine learning algorithms to predict volunteer turnover

Turnover, or employees quitting an organization, is a key issue for most employers, and much prior research has examined the various job-related predictors of turnover. However, few have explored the effect of non-cognitive predictors (e.g., role ambiguity, satisfaction with colleagues) on turnover, especially among volunteer populations. Such research is particularly important with volunteers, who generally lack traditional motivators such as pay or lack of alternative options. Moreover, few studies have employed modern machine learning methods to examine the relative importance of different predictors. This study tests 14 different machine learning models on a large sample of volunteers, using a set of non-cognitive variables to predict turnover.

Psychology, Business, Statistics, Organizational Leadership

Steven

Freedom of Information

Using freedom of information (FOI) requests, uncover and share information currently unknown by the public. Work to develop a compelling story and deliver it to those whose lives would be improved by this knowledge. Learn to file FOI requests, develop an understanding of local, state, and/or federal government transparency procedures and current obstacles to obtaining information. Establish routines and benchmarks for high-quality writing and compelling story crafting. Understand the mechanisms that allow for stories to have a positive impact.

Philanthropy, Organizational Leadership

Conner

Music evolution through the decades: Analyzing the history of your favorite music genre

Students could pick their favorite genre of music, for example Hip-Hop, Jazz, Rap, RnB, etc., and learn about the history of this genre, including key artists who influenced the genre, cities where the genre was developed, and different styles and phases the genre went through. Students could analyze different societal factors, like political climate, racial tension and community structures, that impacted music production during each time period. The student would have the opportunity to pick the genre, decide what elements of the genre to focus on analyzing, and put their research together in a unique artistic representation (website, blog, social media account, collage).

Psychology, Arts, History, Literature, Social Science, Organizational Leadership

Mimi

Building Entrepreneurs

Build a consumer product using a design thinking framework. Identify a customer pain point and ideate until you find product market fit.

Organizational Leadership

Jaramogi

Research Project on Youth Vaping Epidemic

I researched data related to a Public Heath crisis of the youth vaping epidemic. This was a 25 page research project in which I received an A. I also had to make a ppt and present my findings to a group. I would love the opportunity to present my entire paper and project.

Philosophy, Ethics, Psychology, Public Health, Finance, Organizational Leadership

Candice

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

Caroline

Mental Health Career (or Startup)

Explore various career paths within the mental health sector, encompassing opportunities in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, as well as assisting in the initial stages of launching a mental health startup. Upon completion of the project, participants will achieve the following outcomes: Gain insight into diverse career options within the mental health field, enabling informed career decisions. Develop a comprehensive understanding of potential avenues to engage with mental health, whether through employment or entrepreneurship. Acquire foundational knowledge and skills to initiate and navigate the early stages of launching a mental health-focused venture, fostering entrepreneurship in the mental health sector.

Philanthropy, Business, Organizational Leadership

Luciana

Market Research

When entering into a new business industry (to launch a new product or to buy a company), it's important to conduct market research to gather information about the existing landscape, market size, growth potential, trends, and target customers. Choose an industry that you are interested in. From there, we can explore ways to develop a framework for market research, tools to conduct the research, and how to analyze the findings. Final product can be in a form of a powerpoint. This can be taken a step further by researching real-life companies that could benefit from entering this industry.

Business, Organizational Leadership

Geraldine

Best Behavior practices for students with moderate-severe disabilities

Within this project, the student will explore various behavior strategies that are commonly used with students with severe needs. Student will choose a student to focus on that displays a significant behavior. Student will then choose a behavior strategy to utilize to attempt to shape their undesired behavior within the classroom. Student will observe, predict, analyze and dissect the data collected to determine the effectiveness of their hypothesis.

Arts, Organizational Leadership

Renee

What Drives Healthcare Innovation?

The intersection between AI, technology, big data, and medicine draws increasing attention amongst health care leaders. With massive advancements in health data for prophylactic management, telemedicine, and robotic surgeries, healthcare innovation centers are in high demand. Housed in either private industry or academic research universities, healthcare innovation centers drive cross-sector collaboration to advance the art and science of medicine; however, not all innovation centers succeed. In this project, you will interview healthcare leaders from innovation centers across the country, uncovering which factors drive centers to successful innovation and which factors leave centers unable to change the status quo.

Public Health, Finance, Organizational Leadership, Medicine

Michael

Project Management Execution

Build a set of tools to manage any project end-to-end from hypothesis statement to research to analysis to recommendations.

Organizational Leadership

Jaramogi

Exploring Local Agricultural Systems

Let's research how food gets to your plate and the impact of global and local agricultural systems. This research slide deck will allow you to communicate food systems impacts to an audience of peers. To build this presentation, you'll explore research papers but also interview local food systems advocates in local government and from farms in your area. This is a great way to learn about something we encounter multiple times a day (food!) that has deep global impacts that are often not obvious. This is a great project for anyone interested in food, the environment, or policy.

Business, Organizational Leadership

Kyle

Management Consulting 101

Interested in consulting? The best way to learn is to just get started. We'll work together to find a real business that can use your support, and go from there. You'll gain firsthand experience scoping a project, managing client communications, and leveraging qualitative and quantitative data to execute on a project. We'll close with making sure your resume and LinkedIn showcase your experience.

Philanthropy, Business, Organizational Leadership

Jessica

Make an Idea into a Business

There are a lot of ideas out there, but how do we come up with a great one that can become a business? Discuss how to...vet ideas, flesh out ideas, research the market, create a business model, develop a go-to-market strategy, and pitch to investors. This could be delivered as a podcast, powerpoint, or video on how to navigate this entrepreneurial process or even working on one of your own ideas!

Business, Organizational Leadership

Geraldine

Parent Evaluation of the UCLA TIES Infant Mental Health (IMH) program.

Develop an online parent survey as well as conduct qualitative interviews with referred foster/adoptive parents. The objective would be to obtain input from foster and adoptive parents participating in IMH to analyze the effectiveness of this program, perceptions of relationships with TIES, and if perceptions of relationships differed between families and UCLA TIES clinicians. The survey should include demographic and family history data that can be used to identify children that have been placed in care with higher risk factors (e.g., prior abusive history, number of placements, age of placement) who are statistically likely to experience emotional, social, and academic dysregulation in life. This evacuation is intended to be used to improve the quality of services received by adoptive/foster parents so that children placed in resource care are wholly supported.

Psychiatry, Music, Neuroscience, Social, Psychology, Social Science, Nutrition, Cognitive, Public Health, Organizational Leadership

Annalea

A Policy Memo Related to K-12 or Higher Education Issues

In this project, you will write a policy memorandum to your Congressional representative on an issue of your choice related to K-12 education or higher education. While there are many types of memoranda or “memos” in policy writing, your goal is to both inform the audience, and express a specific point of view backed by evidence. Topics could range from addressing gun violence in schools to the college student debt crisis. This process will teach you how to argue a point of view and support your position with evidence. Meanwhile, you will gain skills in identifying policy writing research sources, writing and editing, as well as in-depth knowledge of your chosen research topic.

Organizational Leadership

Nida

Product management 101

Learn product management fundamentals and industry best practices, especially in the software industry. Learn how to identify customer requirements, define MVP and create a roadmap that delights your customers, build strategies for monetization, go-to-market, and growth. Also, build an understanding of what success for your product looks like and how/what data to use to understand the state of your business at any point in time.

Business, Organizational Leadership

Tanu

Literature Review

Write a literature review on an important topic or issue. Learn how to synthesize current research papers and articulate your own thoughts and ideas on the topic.

Social, Psychology, Organizational Leadership

Tina