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
An Idea to Change The World
Do you have something powerful to say? Do you have a skill or knowledge to share? Games can be a great medium to share that. If you have change you want to create in players, an idea is all it takes to get started on making a Transformational Game!
Animation
Create a Web App Frontend and Backend-
This project would be another open-ended project where the students would be guided through the whole process of making a web app including identifying the problem, designing the app and its features, creating the front end experience, developing the backend, and testing. The project would be intended to use HTML + Javascript but advanced students can choose more difficult routes like Angular, React.js, etc.
Computer Science
Cultural Diet & Cancer Susceptibility
Writing a Review - In this project, you will write a paper regarding the nuances of cultural diets and their susceptibilities to various types of cancers. You can focus on one culture or compare and contrast the diets of different cultures. Throughout this process, you will learn how to find and interpret data, analyze results, and how to incorporate primary literature into a review paper all while thinking critically. At the end of this project, you will have the confidence and knowledge of how to write a review based on primary research and will be able to utilize the skills you learned to conduct further research on topics of your choosing.
Psychiatry, Biology, Medicine
Voter propensity project
Communication un⩘Breakdown is focused on using technology and data science to help community organizers reach specific populations for an empathy-based citizen engagement program known as “Deep Canvassing.” Leveraging a close relationship with People’s Action, voter demographic data, and responses from former and active Deep Canvass campaigns, we apply supervised machine learning and reinforcement learning techniques for our MVP, “Dynamic and Responsive Targeting System,” or DARTS, to find undecided voters for the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, and subsequently, the Georgia Senate runoff. https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/projects/2020/communication-unbreakdown
Finance
Facial Emotions to Affect Vehicle Control
Some riders may be nervous to be in an autonomous vehicle, and it's important to make smooth, safe rides for these passengers. What if their car could understand how they might be feeling, and drive slower to accommodate their cautionary feelings?
Music, AI/ML
Brand Marketing Campaign
Choose a brand of your choice and come up with an overarching brand campaign that is relevant in today's society. We will explore different avenues on how to reach the customer with our campaign.
Fashion, Business
Music and Healing in LGBTQIA+ Community
We can create a Powerpoint Presenation, Podcast, or paper about how music and community can address issues such as hate crimes, marginalization, and alienation and build support and family in the LGBTQ+ community.
Music, Psychology, Arts
Machine Learning in Sports
First gain an understanding of how machine learning is used in sports and sport science today before attempting to implement new architectures and methods on available youtube data. Baseball has a fantastic array of data that can easily be used for projects and can teach web scraping skills as well as machine learning techniques.
Engineering, Computer Science, Sports Analytics, AI/ML
Coffee Plant Growth Conditions and Taste Profiles
Coffee beans grown in different regions of the world have distinct taste profiles. There are many factors that likely contribute to these differences such as the genetics of the plants grown, soil conditions, and weather patterns of the region. Through comparing these factors, and inferring possible biochemical differences, we can then link variations in coffee taste to specific plant growth conditions. To demonstrate the results of the project we can build a digital tool that would allow users to "design" a coffee farm given their own taste preferences.
Biotech
Can you always verify whether the arithmetic mean of a finite set of numbers equals to its geometric mean?
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. It is well known that the geometric mean of them does not exceed the arithmetic mean. 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 arithmetic mean equals to the geometric mean. The challenging part is to show that such an algorithm does not exist in general when the numbers are CRNs.
Economics, Quantitative, Math
8 legs are better than 2!
The octopus is one of my favorite animals- not just because they're crazy smart but because they're amazing movers! 70% of neurons in the octopus are located in their arms, which control their movement, the texture of their skin, the color of their camouflage, and each individual sucker. On top of that, they can detect color and taste through their skin! In this project, you'll learn about the motor and chromatophore systems of these amazing creatures along with their unique behaviors for camouflage. Along the way, you'll learn the core principles of how neurons communicate and produce behavior.
Neuroscience, Psychology, AI/ML
Processing Available Cryo-EM Data
There are many open source datasets of images available that have been used to determine atomic structures of particles. A general idea might be to reprocess this data with different techniques/software to answer questions that have not yet been answered. This would be computationally expensive. Likely will require access to a computer with a strong GPU.
Biotech, Cancer
Brain Cancer: An Exploration of the Genomic Landscape and Novel Treatment Approaches
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. Tumors that develop in the central nervous system present uniquely difficult problems for medical and surgical treatment. Surgical removal is often complicated by nearby brain regions important for daily functioning. The effects of chemotherapy are frequently blunted by the blood-brain barrier preventing drug penetrance into the tumor itself. For decades, our treatments ranged from "good" to "slightly better", leaving us with few options in patients presenting with advanced or recurrent cancers. The past few years, however, have seen an explosion in the study of genomics and epigenomics in our drive towards personalized therapies guided by molecular tumor characterization. Recent discoveries have facilitated the development of novel therapies ranging from immunotherapy to oncolytic viral therapy, emerging options which offer optimism for treating cancers not responsive to traditional cancer treatments. For this project, students will explore the genetics of brain cancers and how understanding molecular pathogenesis may translate to novel therapies. Students will synthesize the current state of the literature in the form of either a review manuscript or a 15-minute presentation.
Surgery, Medicine
Finding Global History in China
An opportunity to learn about and research aspects of China and its history that are rarely taught in the United States, China, or elsewhere. The time period and thematic focus are up to you; examples of themes include religion, race and ethnicity, frontiers, and connections to other world regions. No prior knowledge is expected, but if you'd like, this project can include work with historical or literary sources in Chinese or other relevant languages. Many Chinese sources are available in English translation as well.
History
System Sizing: Optimizing Battery Size or Use for Home Applications
At the start of any energy storage project, we want to size a system based on need and cost. Create a calculator to calculate ideal energy storage size based on home load profiles (made public by the Open EI). Better yet, use electricity rates in your area, determine the best time to use energy from an energy storage system to minimize electricity costs.
Engineering
Helping the FDA Approve Disease Treatments
Review and understand FDA and the drug development approval process. Use FDA regulations to approve a potential drug or a drug already on the market.
Chemistry, Math
Beyoncé as Poetry? Street Performance as Prose?
Rap. Movies. Musicals. That street performer who jumped over your head. Writing does not just mean a poem by a white man from the 1800s. Writing is the accordion player on the subway. The giggling baby dancing in a snow suit. Through this project we'll uncover how words show up in our everyday surroundings through (non?)fiction and poetry, using as many artistic mediums as you wish.
Creative Writing, Linguistics
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
Curating recent advancements of CAR-T therapy.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies has significantly improved outcomes in cancer patients. Over the last several years, there has been many variations of CAR-T therapy, such as armored CAR-T therapy, dual CAR-T therapy, self-destruct CAR-T therapy, etc. Additionally, CAR-T therapy has been applied to other diseases. It would be very impactful to curate these different variations, the pros/cons of each variant, and the use case of each of these variants.
Biology, Cancer, Engineering, AI/ML
Exploring the Function of Genetic Variations in Breast and Ovarian Cancers through High-Sequencing Techniques
Despite the completion of the human genome project in 2003, many new questions about human disease and chronic illnesses remain unanswered. To uncover some of the answers to this information gap, we can re-analyze datasets branching from the human genome project. For this project, we will use high-sequencing techniques to model function for genetic variations in specific human disease models, such as breast and ovarian cancers. Insights from this project can further inform other target areas for exploration and contribute to the development of new treatments for these diseases. Project Goals: -Identify genetic variations associated with breast and ovarian cancers using data mining tools. -Understand the function of identified genetic variations in the development of these cancers -Provide insights on new target areas for exploration in the field of breast and ovarian cancer research. This project involves the use of bioinformatics tools and methods to analyze large genomic data sets, and will provide you with the opportunity to develop your skills in data analysis and bioinformatics while contributing to the advancement of cancer research.
Biology, Cancer, Public Health
