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

Analyzing & Communicating Infectious Disease Data

Picture yourself as a data analyst in a state health department. For a specific infectious disease (e.g. COVID-19, Flu, Lyme disease, etc.) – what information is important to know (About the pathogen? About the people getting infected?)? How would you find this information and once you’ve found it, how would you communicate it? This project could be anything from a research paper to a full-fledged, interactive visualization in R or Tableau.

Biology, Public Health

Abbey

COVID 19 Vaccine

In this project, you will work to create a presentation, infographic, pamphlet, or whatever you see best to explain the COVID vaccine. Many people are afraid of the vaccine, and you are tasked with helping public health officials communicate why it is important to get the vaccine.

Biology, Nutrition, Public Health

Emma

Project Management In a Healthcare Setting

Project Management Execution- Would you like to discover how to design an awesome strategy for improving how things work in healthcare? In this project you will learn about quality management and the operational/business side of healthcare. Together we can work on conceptualizing and implementing a set of tools to manage and operate a healthcare project from start to finish. A few examples of project topics in this space include reducing medication errors and programs to combat physician burnout. This includes determining areas for improvement, formulating a hypothesis, collecting data and analyzing systems to see where improvements can be made, drafting an initial proposal to present to management with effective communication methods, and defining metrics that could be used to evaluate the success of your proposal. You will eventually write a final paper detailing the problem you’re trying to solve, potential methods for solving it, and reviewing case studies from existing literature. Skills- Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Basic Tableau

Biology, Public Health

Imantha

Setting up a Public Health Intervention

How do you go about creating a public health intervention, whether locally or internationally? Type of questions/areas in this project: - What is the community's main problem? - Is there a current method to address it? - Is there a better method that can be used? - What socio/cultural aspects do you have to consider when building this intervention? - Who are the stakeholders? - Is there epidemiological data on this topic? - What are the barriers to get this intervention to work? - What is the main outcome of interest?

Public Health

Adriana

How are Effects of Stress, Trauma, and Adversity Transmitted Across Generations?

Not only can stress, adversity, and trauma influence mental and physical health of someone who directly experiences them, they can also be transmitted to the next generation. In this project, you will review the literature on how mothers' experiences of stress, trauma, or adversity influence her child's development within one biological system (e.g., the brain, gut microbiome). You will learn how to evaluate scientific literature, synthesize findings across studies, and organize your work into sections, ultimately culminating in the writing of a literature review.

Biology, Public Health, Statistics

Francesca

Systematic review on urban youth risk for using marijuana.

This project searches and analyze relevant published articles to determine the risk of urban youth using marijuana. It aims to understand the factors that may cause urban youth to use marijuana and identify strategies to address it.

Healthcare, Public Health

Angelo

Emotion Regulation in Relationships

How people manage their emotions (i.e., their ability to self-regulate) contributes not only to their own happiness, but also to the success of their relationships, including romantic and platonic. Explore the academic literature on emotion regulation in relationships: What strategies are most beneficial? Is it more advantageous to focus on positive or negative emotions? Which dimensions of relationships (e.g., trust, self-discloure, closeness) are most influenced by emotion regulation? Your final product could be a scientific literature review, blogpost, or podcast!

Psychology, Social Science, Public Health

Jacquelyn

Pathway to a Career in Healthcare

This project will be focusing on exploring careers in the healthcare field. I will help the student explore their interest in healthcare and offer strategies to increase their opportunity and exposure in their field of interest. At the end of this project, the student will have a step-by-step plan to pursue their desired career in healthcare.

Ethics, Public Health

Blake

Assessing the Impact of Online Health Education on Awareness and Behavioral Changes

Skills Required: Research design and methodology Data collection and analysis Literature review and synthesis Statistical analysis Communication and report writing Description: This project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of online health education in creating awareness and promoting positive behavioral changes among a specific target population. This project will provide the student with hands-on experience in conducting research, evaluating the effectiveness of health interventions, and analyzing data. Additionally, it will allow them to contribute to the field of public health by generating evidence-based knowledge that can inform future health education initiatives.

Public Health, Medicine

Estefania

Project 1: Failed Self-Tolerance: When Our Immune System Attacks Us

The immune system is like a little army within our body that prevent us from getting diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites and more! It also helps in eliminating cancer cells. However, sometimes, the immune system can make a mistake and attack our own proteins and cells, leading to autoimmune diseases such as Lupus Erythematosus, Type I Diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis and more. For this project, students can explore one or multiple autoimmune disease(s) of their choice. Students will learn to read primary literature relating to the pathophysiology of the autoimmune disease(s) and write a review paper summarizing current scientific work on the autoimmune disease(s). Alternatively, students can choose to hone their scientific communication skills by preparing a 15-minute presentation on the autoimmune(s). Students will then receive individualized feedback to improve public speaking and presentation skills.

Cancer, Public Health

Quan

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

Using publicly-available datasets to evaluate policy interventions

There are many types of projects we could work on together. As an example, we could investigate whether a particular policy intervention (e.g., Clean Air Act) influenced changes in an outcome (e.g., # preterm births, CO2 levels in a local community, etc.) over time.

Biology, Public Health, Statistics

Jeliyah

Improving Food Security Through Capacity Building

The purpose of this group project is to determine how to address a significant public health issue. We can go in different directions with this project. We can do a public policy or social and behavioral approach. The end result could be a research paper, poster, website, podcasts, or blogs. Potential skills: Exel data analysis, Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of public policy analytical tools or social and behavioral approaches.

Public Health, Medicine

Estefania

Design a Clinical Psychology and/or Public Health Research Study

Do you have a research question related to mental or physical health issues? Have you wondered what factors put people at risk or protect people from these conditions? Interested in what interventions or policies can help prevent or treat these conditions and how to adapt them for different populations or contexts? Are you stuck on where to begin? I will help you put your interests in the context of existing research and develop your own literature review, study, or set of policy recommendations or guidelines. Studies can be quantitative or qualitative and with data you collect or that is publicly available.

Psychiatry, Public Health, Statistics

Tarik

Science Communication

One of the most important parts of medical/STEM studies is the ability to explain complex scientific ideas to the lay population. Physicians need to be able to explain diseases and treatments to patients. Public Health officials need to be able to explain why certain policies are necessary or why certain ideas need to be examined further. For this project: -Students will choose a topic they feel passionately about -Perform a comprehensive literature review -Create educational materials such as a PSA video, brochure, and/or presentation to describe their topic to a lay population

Biology, Cancer, Public Health

Kendra

Roadmap of Infant Social/Emotional Development

Create a roadmap (flowchart, presentation, map) of infant social and emotional development from birth to age 2. Identifying milestones, turning points, and detours. Example detour: pandemic induced isolation.

Psychology, Public Health

Brianna

Infographic

Create an aesthetically pleasing and informative infographic that will clearly and concisely display a subject matter of your choice.

Environmental Science, Public Health

John-Paul

Why don't we have an HIV Vaccine?

With the quick turn around on the development of a vaccine for COVID-19 people have turned to other viruses and asked why we don't have a vaccine for them yet. HIV is another virus that caused a global epidemic and yet it does not have an effective vaccine yet. The answer why lies in both the nature of the virus and its target and to tease this apart one would need to have a foundational understanding of virology. This project could take the form of a literature review on the history of HIV vaccine efforts and where we stand today or could be an Op-ed/blog post answering the burning question everyone has had on their mind since we heard of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Public Health

Kolin

Social Justice Engagement Project

Social justice data science projects can allow you to think “globally, but act locally”. For example, if there is a new crime law in your community determining, using a dataset released from your community, can help portray whether this new law has positively affected your community or not. This would require using data visualization graphs to report findings in an interesting and interpretable way. You will also use fundamental statistical tests to validate your results. If the findings are interesting, the findings can be written about in a blog post and/or be reported to an elected official in your community.

AI/ML, Public Health

Evan

Community-needs assessment and implementation of evidence-based behavioral intervention

Conduct a needs-finding assessment to identify health disparities in your community or school. Use qualitative research methods such as focus groups, key informant interviews, PhotoVoice and write a proposal of actionable solutions. This project will be heavily focused on "field work" and gathering information from community members' lived experiences.

Public Health

Michelle