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
Develop MATLAB/Python code to visualize trajectories of satellites
Based on the equations of motion for objects in space, we can visualize the motion in MATLAB/Python. This requires knowledge of conic sections and the coding environment, however it gives deep insight into how forces work and their mathematical interpretation can lead to actual simulation.
Physics, Engineering, Quantitative, Math
Scientific Literature Review
Do you want to know what the scientific literature says about somethingyou are interested in? Let's review the scientific literature to support your project with a review of current research of a topic of your interest.
Neuroscience, Quantitative, Linguistics
Using biomedical sensing data to examine indicators of cognitive decline over time
Providing that there is accessible sensing data collected from Dementia and Alzheimer's patients, analysis can be performed on gait (walking speed), balance, and circadian rhythm changes over time. Perhaps the student can train a classifier to predict the likelihood that an undiagnosed elderly person has cognitive impairment given their health data over some extended period of time. This project could culminate in an interactive web app or a research paper / blog post.
Computer Science, Sports Analytics, Quantitative, AI/ML
Go To Market
Take an idea, be it a product or service, and build it into an actual business plan. Focus on creating value for your customer through your business and create a winning sales pitch to secure sales and/or funding.
Economics, Quantitative, Finance
Rent Control in Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future
This projects explores the development of rent control policy in the City of Los Angeles and how it impacts housing stability and community integration. Students will research the historical root and current discourse on rent control, identify issues in the policy implementation process, and put forward recommendations on how to effectively address the housing needs for people at all income levels.
Quantitative, Social Science
The Life and Death of the Special Attack
One common trend among light novels is the use of special attacks, as the main character progresses older techniques fall out of favor, especially in longer titles with hundreds of chapters. A simple project would be to process a light novel and count the frequency of a special attack. Then we can answer some simple questions: -What is their most-used attack? -What is the longest span of chapters a given technique is used for? -Do technique names become more extravagant as the story progresses? -Do any of the above change between different authors (or maybe the same author but different titles)?
Computer Science, Quantitative, Math
Bioinformatics Analysis
In this project, I would work with the student to craft their own bioinformatics analysis using biological data - for example, open-source genetic and physiological data, or data from their own wearable device (Fitbit, Apple Watch etc.). I would mentor the student in identifying a topic and hypothesis to research, reading relevant scientific literature, learning new techniques, implementing the analysis, and crafting a final paper. For students with more coding experience, this analysis could incorporate advanced machine learning and predictive modeling techniques, while students with less coding experience could focus on statistical comparisons and correlations. The final product would likely be a scientific report and/or documented software to be shared on GitHub. In addition to bioinformatics, this project would provide the opportunity to learn about preparing a formal scientific article and writing publishable code.
Biology, Quantitative, AI/ML, Medicine
Do protected areas work? Exploring long term species abundence before and after the implementation of a protected area.
Using fish data from the Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment Program, calculate biodiversity in an area of the Caribbean where a marine protected area was established. Does biodiversity increase after the implementation of the protected area?
Quantitative, Environmental Science, Social Science
Number theory
How do we know that there are no nonzero integers x, y, and z such that x^4 + y^4 = z^4? How can you tell whether a number is prime? Given numbers n and m, how can you tell whether n differs from some square number by a multiple of m? Can complex numbers tell us anything about ordinary integers? How can you send messages that an eavesdropper won't be able to decipher? These are some of the questions that you'll be able to answer when you learn number theory.
Quantitative, Math
Can you always verify whether a Geometric Mean of a finite collection of numbers equals to one of them?
Constructive Real Numbers CRNs were introduced by the founder of Computer Science Alan Turing. Essentially a CRN is a computer generated sequence of rational numbers about which you know how fast it converges. Constructive Mathematics was developed in two schools founded by Bishop in the USA and by Markov and Shanin in Russia. You are give a finite set of numbers. The easy part of the project is to show that when the numbers are rational it is easy to create an algorithm that verifies if the geometric mean of these numbers equals to one of them. The challenging part is to show that such an algorithm does not exist in general when the numbers are CRNs.
Economics, Quantitative, Math
Coming of Age: Gen Z's Higher education attainment and first job outcomes
This project explores how the elder cohort of Gen Z (aged 18-24) fare in terms of college attendance, college completion, postgraduate education attainment and labor market outcomes. Comparative analysis can be done among Gen Z, Gen Y and Gen X.
Quantitative
Media Project
Depending on the scope of how much you'd like to accomplish, here is what I think we could do together in 10 sessions. I'm using a YouTube channel as an example, which we could also apply to blogging and podcasting. YouTube Channel: -identify channels that you look up and why they are successful -identify resources you'll need to ensure the success and follow-through of this project, such as tools to learn how to edit videos, video editing programs, recording tools -brainstorm the direction of the channel and the target audience for your content -marketing strategies, such as where you can promote your channel -a plan for the content of each video for a season or two -(if you plan on having guests on your channel), send out invites and set up a time with them -shoot/edit/publish the videos
Quantitative
How social interactions and social networks increase subjective well-being
In this project, we test for underlying mechanisms that galvanize the benefits of social interaction. Across our studies, we ask participants to report how they feel before and after every single social interaction they had over the course of a week. We also ask them to report why they feel the way they did after the interaction. Using qualitative and quantitative analysis, we find evidence that helps understand the benefits to social interactions and can inform interventions in future studies.
Social, Psychology, Quantitative, Social Science
Are mangrove restoration efforts effective? Measuring the long-term impacts of restoration efforts.
The re-planting of mangrove habitats have been a popular tool in habitat restoration. However, emerging research shows that many of these restoration efforts don't last. Using satellite imagery, measure the growth (or decline) of a site where a large-scale mangrove restoration operation occurred.
Quantitative, Environmental Science, Social Science
Sentiment analysis of COVID-19 vaccine tweets
Apply data mining to query and synthesize hundreds of thousands of tweets and perform sentiment analysis to compare which COVID-19 vaccine is most promising in different geographic regions. Compare which side effects are most predominant among Pfizer vaccine recipients versus Moderna vaccine recipients. This project would likely culminate in a Medium article which takes the reader through the project from exploratory data analysis to code implementation, and finally a well-articulated discussion of research findings and limitations.
Computer Science, Sports Analytics, Quantitative, AI/ML
Chemical Production Scheduling
In this project, you will explore the science of manufacturing and how to organize a chemical plant on a high-level such that all of the batches and tasks that are being run are optimized. This entails scheduling operations in a timely manner while also maximizing the revenue and minimizing the costs of production. You will explore the effects of optimal scheduling on products and demand specifications while analyzing the sensitivity of the profits on raw materials/inputs. Prerequisites No prior coding skills are required, but you must be interested in learning how to develop algebraic formulations from real-world problems.
Engineering, Quantitative, Math
Knot theory
A knot is simply a closed loop of string. You'll learn about: How to represent knots on a page. How knots can be combined, and how to find knots that can't be created by combining other knots. Techniques for determining whether or not two knots are distinct, in the sense that neither can be deformed to match the other. Related objects such as links and braids. Applications of knots in physical sciences.
Quantitative, Math
Chicago Food Health Inspection
For all the foodies out there, this is a great dataset to learn more about local and chain restaurants in Chicago. You can stratify the dataset and review inspection infractions based on your interests (like fast food chains). We can even feature engineer additional predictors to help predict whether or not a restaurant will have a violation. If you're not up for model building, we could even create an interactive dashboard solution to help visualize and better understand groups and patterns in the data. It really is all up to you! Dataset: https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Food-Inspections/4ijn-s7e5
Computer Science, Sports Analytics, Quantitative, Statistics
The Persuasive Potential of Message Framing, Temporal Orientation, and Self-Affirmation in Anti-Vaping Campaigns
This is a project I am currently working on that aims to better understand what aspects of anti-vaping messages are most persuasive. Additionally, the project looks to establish how successful certain messages might be in changing attitudes and behaviors among individuals who use e-cigarettes.
Social, Psychology, Quantitative, Social Science, Public Health
Stress and Strain Sensor Design
Sensors that measure forces and change in dimensions are ubiquitous in our day-to-day life, from use in airplanes and cars to monitor the tires and wings to your phone which uses them to enable technologies like Touch ID. All of these complicated sensors, however, boil down to the same set of sensor design principles and physics. In this project, you will learn about these mechanisms and how sensors transform mechanical signals to electrical ones. The project will culminate in designing your own sensor to measure stress or strain and wiring it up to collect the data.
Engineering, Computer Science, Quantitative
