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
The power of having a long runway when investing
Investigate the different outcomes of people starting their investing journey at different ages.
Business, Finance
Building psychological safety in organizations
This project looks at how psychological safety can be built through intentional management choices. The goal is to understand the effect that leading through culture has on individuals, and the tools that are available to leaders and managers in building a psychologically safe organization.
Finance
What college should I attend?
This example project uses data science to make an informed decision about what college a student should attend. The first step involves gathering data from various sources, aggregating and cleaning the data in Python, R, or MATLAB, and finally using various data science methods to arrive at a decision.
Business, Finance
Understanding Financials of a Business
I have a strong background in finance, advising and investing in growing companies in many different industries. I would love to help create and guide a student through a project with the goals of: (a) understanding how to read the financials of a business and (b) creating their own financial statements for a real or fictional business.
Finance
Examining Social Stressors Among Students
Social stressors among students, such as a lack of friends, being in different classes, interpersonal conflicts, and peer pressure, can adversely affect their mental health. Exploring the impact of these stressors and potential factors that amplify or mitigate their effects could form the basis of a research paper, slide deck, or podcast. Quantitative or qualitative data analysis could be utilized depending on the student's interest area. In addition to examining the impact of social stressors among students, there are other avenues of research that can be explored. For example, a student could delve into the coping mechanisms employed by students to deal with social stressors, and how these strategies affect their overall well-being. Another research direction could involve examining the role of social support networks in mitigating the negative effects of social stressors on students' mental health. Furthermore, exploring the long-term consequences of experiencing social stressors during the student years and its potential implications for adulthood could be another intriguing research area to explore.
Literature, Creative Writing, Business, Finance
Investing for Beginners: Equities, Cryptocurrencies, Bonds, and Real Estate
In this project, you will learn about the basics of all the different asset classes and how each instrument serves a specific purpose in one's investment portfolio. You will write a research paper surveying risk characteristics and return potential. Also, you will learn how to analyze businesses and develop financial models. Prerequisites This project is open to all students who have a strong interest in finance and the markets. Strong math skills and a willingness to learn Excel will be helpful.
Computer Science, AI/ML, Finance
Analysis of the Effect of Interest Rate on Stock Prices A Case Study of Ghana Stock Exchange
This research used quantitative methodology and was performed using regression analyses to assess the relationship between interest rates and stock prices on the Ghana stock exchange. The ordinary least square regression was estimated with stock price as the dependent variable and interest rate as the independent variable. The variables were transformed into their natural logarithm forms
Economics, Social Science, Finance
Purchasing Small Businesses
Are you interested in entrepreneurship but unsure of where to start? Have you considered purchasing an existing small business as a pathway to entrepreneurship? This student mentorship project offers a unique opportunity for you to delve into the process of purchasing small businesses, guided by experienced mentors. By the end of the project, you will have a solid understanding of the steps involved in acquiring a small business and be equipped to pursue your entrepreneurial goals. Expected Outcomes: 1) In-depth understanding of the process and strategies involved in purchasing small businesses. 2) Ability to evaluate and assess potential acquisition opportunities based on market analysis and due diligence. 3) Knowledge of negotiation techniques and deal structuring to achieve favorable terms. 4) Insights into post-acquisition integration and management strategies for successful business transitions. 5) Enhanced entrepreneurial mindset and business acumen.
Literature, Social Science, Business, Finance
Mapping U.S. inequality
Household income varies dramatically between neighborhoods, cities, counties, and regions in the U.S. For this project, students will first use Census data and mapping libraries in R to visualize the spatial dimension of economic inequality. Then they can home in on whatever factors interest them most—such as differences in education or occupation—or examine several policy proposals intended to address this inequality. Students interested in political science might also want to study the relationship between local economic outcomes and voting patterns.
Economics, Finance, Statistics
Sports Injuries: Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation
In this project, you will select a sports injury and recommend injury prevention techniques to a coach and design a 6-month rehabilitation program for an injured athlete. You will learn: • Anatomy of the injured area • Common movements that cause the injury • Techniques on coping with injuries • Pros and Cons of surgery vs. no surgery • Five stages of recovery • Specific rehabilitation exercises
Finance
Real Estate Investment Portfolio
Develop a financial model to understand the benefits and shortfalls of a real estate investment. This can be applied to single-family homes, multi-family properties, or apartment complexes.
Finance
Analyze a Company or Compare Two Companies
Have a company in mind that you're interested in learning more about? I have a strong background analyzing companies as an investor, and I would love to help a student help analyze several parts of a company including financials/growth, leadership team, market size, competitive threats, company culture, and more. Have two companies in mind, maybe two competitors, that you'd like to learn more about? We can also analyze them side by side.
Finance
Podcast:
Help students launch a podcast relevant to a topic of interest, and show them how to retain users.
Finance
Investment Opportunities in Education Technology in Emerging Markets
Researching EdTech options of an emerging market in a specific region and researching and finding the best investment avenues using a mix of quantitate and qualitative analysis.
Engineering, Finance
Learn how to validate, build, launch and grow your first startup!
Figuring out 3 of life's big questions: 1. What do you do? 2. Who do you do it with? 3. Where do you do it? has always been a struggle, but now more than ever because we're inundated with choices. If you're an aspiring entrepreneur trying to figure out answers to these questions, this project will help you answer these questions as they relate to your career. Whether you already have an existing idea of what you want to do, or you know you want to start your startup but don't have an idea, this project will help you: 1. generate a profitable idea, based on your unique skills, strengths, and interests 2. validate your ideas to ensure they're worthwhile 3. launch your first startup as cheaply and quickly as possible 4. and set up a system to grow it indefinitely 90% of startups fail, and of the 10% that succeed, they take 2-5 years to become profitable. Don't let these statistics fool you though. Following the best practices in the startup ecosystem ensures you don't fall prey to the same mistakes most founders make. In fact, all of my startups became profitable within their first 3 months. Over the course of ~10 sessions, you will learn how to come up with the right ideas, find product-founder fit and product-market fit, leverage cost-effective launch strategies, and the power of incubators, pre-accelerators, and accelerator programs, to skip the years of trial and error most founders undergo. You'll be exposed to idea generation, market research, business development, website design, digital marketing, and sales optimization. Join this project and decide what you want to do, who you want to do it with, and where you want to do it.
Business, Finance
Investing in technology startups
People often talk about the latest market opportunity, new groundbreaking technologies, and bringing a great team together. If you're an investor, how do you choose between multiple exciting opportunities? Together we'll explore the kinds of discussions that happen behind closed doors, and explore a few investment opportunities ourselves!
Physics, Engineering, Math, Business, Finance
How to Pick A Career (That Actually Fits You)
This is a project about something I’ve been passionate about forever: careers. Because I couldn't explain this better myself, I'll share a slightly edited version of my favorite passage from one of Tim Urban's posts on careers: Society tells us a lot of things about what we should want in a career and what the possibilities are—which is weird because I’m pretty sure society knows very little about any of this. When it comes to careers, society is like your great uncle who traps you at holidays and goes on a 15-minute mostly incoherent unsolicited advice monologue, and you tune out almost the whole time because it’s super clear he has very little idea what he’s talking about and that everything he says is like 45 years outdated. Society is like that great uncle, and conventional wisdom is like his rant. Except in this case, instead of tuning it out, we pay rapt attention to every word, and then we make major career decisions based on what he says. Kind of a weird thing for us to do. Career-path-carving is definitely one of those really really deeply important things. Let’s spell out the obvious reasons why: Time. For most of us, a career (including ancillary career time, like time spent commuting and thinking about your work) will eat up somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 hours. At the moment, a long human life runs at about 750,000 hours. When you subtract childhood (~175,000 hours) and the portion of your adult life you’ll spend sleeping, eating, exercising, and otherwise taking care of the human pet you live in, along with errands and general life upkeep (~325,000 hours), you’re left with 250,000 “meaningful adult hours.” So a typical career will take up somewhere between 20% and 60% of your meaningful adult time—not something to be rash about. Quality of Life. Your career has a major effect on all the non-career hours as well. For those of us not already wealthy through past earnings, marriage, or inheritance, a career doubles as our means of support. The particulars of your career also often play a big role in determining where you live, how flexible your life is, the kinds of things you’re able to do in your free time, and sometimes even in who you end up marrying. Impact. On top of your career being the way you spend much of your time and the means of support for the rest of your time, your career triples as your primary mode of impact-making. Every human life touches thousands of other lives in thousands of different ways, and all of those lives you alter then go on to touch thousands of lives of their own. We can’t test this, but I’m pretty sure that you can select any 80-year-old alive today, go back in time 80 years, find them as an infant, throw the infant in the trash, and then come back to the present day and find a countless number of things changed. All lives make a large impact on the world and on the future—but the kind of impact you end up making is largely within your control, depending on the values you live by and the places you direct your energy. Whatever shape your career path ends up taking, the world will be altered by it. Identity. In our childhoods, people ask us about our career plans by asking us what we want to be when we grow up. When we grow up, we tell people about our careers by telling them what we are. We don’t say, “I practice law”—we say, “I am a lawyer.” This is probably an unhealthy way to think about careers, but the way many societies are right now, a person’s career quadruples as the person’s primary identity. Which is kind of a big thing. So yeah—your career path isn’t like my unfashionable sweatshirt. It’s really really deeply important, putting it squarely in “Definitely absolutely make sure to give it the time it needs” territory. You’re not a pro at this, but you’re certainly more qualified to figure out what’s best for you than our collective un-self-aware great uncle. For those of you yet to start your career who aren’t sure what you want to do with their lives, or those of you currently focusing on a career path who aren’t sure you’re on the right path, I hope this project can help you press the reset button on your thought process and get some clarity.
Business, Finance
Starting out your own business
Let's say that you want to start out your new venture, but didn't know where to start. We will go through the process of what you need to know to get to that next billion dollar idea and get you to the stage where the investors will be interested and fund your journey! Learn what the top founders and investors care about and what to research as you embark on your journey!
Computer Science, Finance
Create a Blog or Podcast Series on a Market/Industry
Do you have a particular market or industry that you'd like to learn more about? I spent three years researching market trends and competitive landscapes as an investor, and I would love to help a student create a blog or podcast series diving into a specific market and some of the interesting businesses operating within that industry.
Finance
What Makes a Country Rich?
You can probably name some rich countries and some poor countries, but what makes a rich country rich? Is it natural resources? Their system of government? Their "human capital" -- education and civic spirit? Or is it just a capricious accident of history we have no control over? Whatever you think, the chess grand master Ben Feingold once said (I'm paraphrasing), "unless you know why you gave you answer, your answer isn't right!" How would you go above proving your theory? You could look at case studies, for example, what did the USA do in the post-war years? What did China do under Deng Xiaoping, or Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew? But... how do we know if these methods can generalize? To go from the general to the particular, this is the role of statistics! Using econometric analysis -- a fancy way of saying statistics -- we can test theories about what causes economic growth, and try to uncover some ideas for leaders and politicians who want to create prosperity for their nations.
Computer Science, Economics, Math, AI/ML, Finance
