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 and Presenting Survey Data

In this project you will learn how to access survey data, how to prepare raw data for analysis, and how to conduct basic summary statistics and create data visualizations. You will create a final report that explains to a professional audience what question you’re answering, how your data enable you to answer it, and what conclusions you drew based on your analysis. Prerequisites: 1) Some background in elementary statistics 2) Some familiarity with code-based statistical software like Stata, SAS, R, or SPSS. Other information: Access to statistical software is required, preferably Stata (license required) or R (open source).

Social Science, Statistics

Chris

Psychology Interventions

As a Cognitive Studies, I became extremely proficient at reading and understanding psychology research studies, and even designing and implementing my own research studies. One research study I completed as an undergrad was called "Effects of Student Satisfaction with Exam Grades on Motivation and Study Strategies." If there is a psychology intervention you are curious to test, I could help you build a strong foundation for your study by helping you find existing literature and understanding it, and then designing and implementing your research study!

Music, Social, Arts, Creative Writing, Social Science, Cognitive

Sophia

Bridging the Learning Gap with Open-Source Data

This project is designed for exploring educational equity by using open-source data to investigate disparities in educational access and outcomes in diverse communities. Students will learn how to gather, analyze, and visualize data, enabling them to better understand the complexities of educational equity and contribute to positive change in their communities. Learning Outcomes: - Enhanced data collection and analysis skills. - Improved understanding of educational equity and disparities. - Awareness of the factors contributing to disparities in education. - The ability to visualize and present data effectively. - Empowerment to advocate for positive change in the field of education.

Economics, Math, Social Science, Statistics

Montserrat

High School Students' Self-Efficacy and Locus of Control in their Educational Experiences

Students are often left out of the decision-making processes that directly affect them and their educational experiences. However, some students have found ways to become involved in these processes. This could be in the form of creating a student advocacy group, attending school board meetings regularly, or some new form of students exercising their political power. This project would identify and then survey and interview a group of students who have gained access to these educational policy spaces. Through these methods we would seek to understand how much control these students' feel they have in their educational experiences (locus of control) and how much they believe they can change their situation (self-efficacy). A control group of students would also be surveyed in comparison to see if participation in these types of processes is correlated with higher self-efficacy or locus of control.

Social, Social Science

Jennifer

Spanish and How it Got that Way

In 711 C.E. the Arabic-speaking Umayyad dynasty began their conquest of the Iberian peninsula, now present-day Spain and Portugal. During this time, there was over 800 years of Arab cultural and linguistic influence on the region. Today, over 4,000 Spanish words derive their origins from Arabic. Students can explore the influence of Arabic on Spanish through the lens of historical linguistics.

Literature, Languages, Creative Writing, Linguistics, Social Science

Jade

Design a Research Study on Immigrant/Minority Mental Health

Do you have a research question related to immigrant/minority mental health issues? Are you stuck on where to begin? I will guide you through developing your own research study based on your research question. We will develop working hypotheses together and devise a research plan for you to implement. This can become a literature review paper, a correlational study, etc., and I can guide you through the process of getting the paper published if that is part of your goal.

Psychology, Creative Writing, Social Science

Cindy

Becoming me

Identity development is an ongoing process of recognizing and developing our beliefs about our race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, or other aspects of our identity. It is influenced by the people around us, as well as what society thinks of people with our identities. We can develop a project to learn about a group of people who share a common identity (bisexual individuals, transgender men, Black women, individuals with disabilities). What do they think about their identity? Who influenced their perception of their identity? What does society think of people like them? How comfortable or happy are they with having this identity?

Social, Psychology, Creative Writing, Social Science

Nat

Sustainability Analysis

Analyze a business, organization, or jurisdiction for sustainability initiatives and implementation success.

Biology, Environmental Science, Social Science

Amanda

High School Club

Are you interested in creating any kind of club at your school? Let's collaborate! Anything that you and your peers are interested in, let's make it happen!

Social Science, Organizational Leadership

Ronni

Data scientist pipeline: sentiment online

This project can teach you the pipeline for becoming an independent data scientist! Answering interesting questions often involves learning how to find data “in the wild”— ethically. We can learn to use an open API to get raw data, clean it, and analyze it. We will then discuss the ethical implications of collecting and using data for social science projects. We will apply computational methods chosen appropriately for your question of interest, perhaps scoping a project to study how people on the internet (Twitter, Reddit, etc) feel about a particular issue, like climate change or COVID-19, through the language they use. We can discuss computational tools for this task-- traditional statistics? Machine learning classification? What are the pros and cons of each computational tool? The final project can be an analysis of your findings, blog post, or academic-style paper discussion.

Social Science, AI/ML, Statistics

Hope

Let's get creative: blog post, podcast, infographic...

Who ever said academia is boring? Let's get your creativity flowing and work toward a final product that makes scientific knowledge fun. This could be a blog post, podcast, infographic, personal memoir, YouTube video, or so on! Based on your specific research question, we'll start by gathering the information you need (through a survey, interviews, reading existing research on the topic, and so on). We'll then work together to present that information in a creative format.

Psychology, Social Science

Abigail

Going FAR: Uterine Fibroids and Reproduction

The purpose of this study was to assess how women who have undergone treatment for UF view the experience, whether they prioritize experimental approaches to remedy any impacts on their fertility, and the psychosocial and socio-economic factors most important to them in considering the preservation or restoration of fertility.

Ethics, Social Science, Public Health, Statistics

Karen

Writing a Long-Form Journalistic Piece or a Nonfiction Narrative

If you have ever wanted to do a deep dive into a current events issue you’re passionate about, I would love to help you get to the point where you can publish a long-form article (approximately 5,000-10,000 words). Alternatively, if you’re interested in writing a historical non-fiction narrative (5,000-15,000 words), I would be happy to guide you. I spent years as a writer and editor at the Harvard Political Review, so I know how to edit journalistic pieces and provide feedback as you go. A core function of my job as a paralegal was editing and copy editing legal documents, so I can go over your drafts with an eye to detail.

Languages, Economics, Social Science

Perry

Country Study through a Foreign Policy Lens

Is there a specific country that interests you? In this project, we will take an in-depth look at a country of your choosing. What role does your country plan in the international community? What is U.S. Foreign Policy towards that country? How does this policy impact the country and its relations? The goal of this project is to produce a paper or presentation that provides background on the country, an analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy, and impacts/recommendations for U.S. Foreign Policy.

Social Science, Organizational Leadership

James

Blood Lead Levels from an Rural-Urban Epidemiological Lens

Using CA blood lead level data from the past decade, I've partnered with a colleague to descriptively represent the current state of lead contaminated water, particularly in the state of California, and how that issue disproportionately impacts areas approaching greater rurality. The data used is openly published and underwent an audit.

Music, Social Science, Business

Chance

Write a Review Paper

In this project, you will write an academic paper reviewing the latest research on a topic of your choice within the field of psychology and/or neuroscience. By engaging deeply with the literature, you will hone your skills in critical thinking, learn to evaluate the strength of scientific evidence, and develop the ability to synthesize complex information into a coherent narrative. This process will also enhance your academic writing skills, teaching you how to construct well-founded arguments and articulate them effectively. Further, I encourage you to cultivate your research interests by picking a topic you are passionate about, which might guiding future academic pursuits or career paths. Possible topics include: - The influence of social connectedness on adolescents’ emotion following social isolation - The impact of video games on adolescent wellbeing - Impact of early life adversity on memory in adolescents

Neuroscience, Psychology, Social Science

Emily

The Effects of COVID-19 on teacher motivation

Education is facing extreme levels of teacher burnout and resignations. COVID-19 has added various obstacles to teaching and learning such as transitioning to virtual schooling, an increase in mental health concerns, trauma, and economic disparities. Few studies have examined the lived experience of educators addressing these added obstacles and challenges. Together we can approach this topic through a survey or interviews (or both!) to better understand teachers' lived experiences working with students in the COVID-19 era.

Psychology, Social Science

Margaret

What makes people more trusting of technology?

Nowadays, we use technology everyday - to get around, to relax, to communicate with others, to find information, etc. Although technology is everywhere around us, we still struggle with trusting it - many of us probably know the feeling of receiving an ad for a product right after looking it up, which is likely uncomfortable for many. Many people do not feel like they can trust their technology, which may prevent them from benefitting from technology. Given how much we use technology, it is important to understand what characteristics of technology make people more or less likely to trust it, and in turn, use it. If the student finds questions about trust within the context of technology interesting, we can explore a research project in this space.

Psychology, Economics, Social Science, Statistics

Keana

The Literature Review

You wanna learn more about existing research in the field of your choice? I got you. Whether it is to find patterns in past empirical findings, summarize cool theories in a field you like, or lowkey diss the methods used by past researchers, doing an extensive review of the existing literature is the way to go! You'll find research papers, read them critically, and synthesize what you've found. Together, we'll go through the criteria of a "good" research paper, the ways to go about obtaining research papers, and talk about the findings you come across. Choose this project if you're down to read a lot and want to feel like an utter expert on a topic!

Social, Psychology, Social Science, Statistics

Aili

Using Spotify to predict mood throughout the day

Question: can you use your personal spotify data to build a model of what kinds of genres you listen to throughout the day and their associated moods, and to predict how your mood might change if you switch between genres? Approach/skills: data wrangling (data science), data analysis, basic statistical modeling, data visualization. Experience with Python coding. Product: cool data visualization of your own listening habits, software tool for others to enter their data and get personalized results

Social Science

Dillan Elise