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
Culinary health for the community
Create a curriculum on health and nutrition which focuses on quick, healthy and affordable meals for busy family. This would be either distributed on your local elementary school's website for family members or given as a hands on cooking class.
Psychiatry, Nutrition
Get The Word Out!
Is there a mental health or public health topic that you are interested in or that is important to you? Do you want to build awareness, reduce stigma, educate or influence change about it? Do you want to do this by creating a website or social media platform, developing a curriculum or workshop, writing a blog or article, or recording a podcast or video? Let's get creative and get the word out!
Psychiatry, Public Health, Statistics
Effect of Lecture-Based Intervention to Promote Resiliency (especially during COVID)
In the era of COVID, humans have had to be more resilient. This project would be to observe how a lecture or series of lectures could theoretically improve resiliency in a group of people. Resiliency has benefits in promoting mental health, increased self-esteem, and more optimistic outlook. Using surveys/tests for resiliency, Students will measure resiliency before and after the proposed intervention.
Psychiatry, Biology, Public Health
Nutrition curriculum for elementary school students
Create 2 to 3 short, interactive lessons for elementary school students about food and exercise in a way that does not focus on weight or “good/bad” foods and present at local elementary school
Psychiatry, Nutrition
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
Social Media Engagement and Attention
The constant influx of fast paced media such as tiktok has led many to question if these platforms will have effects on cognitive processes, such as attention and memory. This experiment will compare social media usage and/or screen time with performance on a cognitive task. One option is the flanker task, which the student can code, for example, in HTML. Demographic measures, or any other behavioral measures the student is interested in, can be added as well.
Psychiatry, Philosophy, Cognitive
Exploitation in the History of Medical Research
American medicine has a long-standing and devastating history of medical experimentation on underserved, primarily African-American, communities. Through this project, we can conduct a review and analysis of either historic or present-day examples of medical experimentation and exploitation, and how these wrong-doings impact the healthcare system today.
Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Psychology
Attention and social media
Social media research has been burgeoning as a research topic alongside social media companies. Some studies find correlations between mood and social media use as well as impacts on well-being and productivity. As tempting as it is to place social media as the primary cause, it is important to determine the degree social media itself has on our behaviors, thoughts, and moods or if they moderate other variables. This research project would measure attentional span and types of social media (ex. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) use to determine if there are any nuanced findings between social media types and attention.
Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Psychology
Medication compliance tool
Create a system/product to help parents remember to give their children medication consistently and timely. promote communication between multiple caregivers regarding dispensing of medication for a dependent.
Psychiatry, Biology, Medicine
What causes someone to hallucinate?
Schizophrenia is an illness marked by experiences which deviate from our accepted reality; this includes hearing or seeing things which are not actually there (a hallucination). In this project you will dive into scientific literature on the causes of hallucinations, reading studies about potential brain-related causes and changes in the way a person perceives and processes the world which could make them hallucinate. We will also explore how clinical hallucinations relate to experiences we all might have such as falling for an optical illusion or thinking we hear our phone when it didn’t buzz. This will culminate in a literature review paper about what causes hallucinations.
Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Statistics
Writing a Literature Review
Writing a review paper is a great way to not only become familiar with a subject but to add your own perspective and insight through having systematically combed through the published literature on a specific research topic. Through this, you will learn how to perform a literature search, learn how to effectively and efficiently read peer-review papers (a non-trivial skill that is often practiced at the graduate school level!), compare/contrast findings across different studies, and distill relevant ideas into a finalized piece that we can be submitted to a student journal.
Psychiatry, Biology, Neuroscience, Literature
Reconceptualizing Suicide: An arrhythmia of the brain versus a sequelae of mental illness
Despite being one of the prevailing public health concerns in our country, suicide rates have continued to increase over decades. A part of the problem is that the conception of suicide is inaccurate in many research domains as well to the general public. The prevailing thought is that suicide is often a sequelae of severe mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder. However, according to prevalence data, those with severe mood disorders only account for a fraction of suicide attempts. What are other models to approach and re-conceptualize suicide? Some recent literature has started to tease out differences between people who ideate about suicide and people who actually make an attempt. This project would involve a literature review about suicide and divorcing this phenomenon from being viewed as a consequence of depression. The outcome is variable - a research paper, opinion piece, or essay would be feasible though other outcomes are welcome. You will learn how to utilize PubMed search engines (with MeSH terms), digest primary research, and tap into writing.
Psychiatry, Biology, Neuroscience, Business
Research Paper- Does Autism cling to Leukemia?
Determining Incidence/prevalence of Leukemia among those with different forms/severities of autism (e.g., Downs Syndrome, Asberger Syndrome, etc.)
Psychiatry, Social, Public Health
Parent Evaluation of the UCLA TIES Infant Mental Health (IMH) program.
Develop an online parent survey as well as conduct qualitative interviews with referred foster/adoptive parents. The objective would be to obtain input from foster and adoptive parents participating in IMH to analyze the effectiveness of this program, perceptions of relationships with TIES, and if perceptions of relationships differed between families and UCLA TIES clinicians. The survey should include demographic and family history data that can be used to identify children that have been placed in care with higher risk factors (e.g., prior abusive history, number of placements, age of placement) who are statistically likely to experience emotional, social, and academic dysregulation in life. This evacuation is intended to be used to improve the quality of services received by adoptive/foster parents so that children placed in resource care are wholly supported.
Psychiatry, Music, Neuroscience, Social, Psychology, Social Science, Nutrition, Cognitive, Public Health, Organizational Leadership
Why do people believe conspiracy theories?
Why do people endorse conspiracy theories like the belief that humans have never been to the moon? First we can dive into scientific papers that have studied why conspiracy theories and other extreme beliefs emerge and what environmental conditions might increase them. We can even think about how the covid-19 pandemic has affected people’s conspiracy-related beliefs. You can then use surveys to study whether different forms of stress or emotional states lead to higher endorsement of conspiracy theories. For instance, do people who experience more uncertainty or anger in their lives also believe more conspiracy theories? Have another idea for studying conspiracy theories, let’s try it!
Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Statistics
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
Decreasing stigma around mental health in high school students
Perform a literature review on successful ways to increase dialogue in mental health in high school students. Use this to create either a website or a student group to implement these efforts.
Psychiatry, Nutrition
Creating a Podcast
Have something you are excited to share with the world? As a lover of long drives and podcasts, I've created a podcast myself and am always looking for ways to help others elevate their voice. In this project you would learn how to create an audience and platform, find resources and guests, and edit episodes.
Psychiatry, Biology, Neuroscience, Psychology
Researching the Application of the 4th Amendment in the Criminal Justice System
This project can focus on investigating how the 4th Amendment is applied in different circuit courts. The student would conduct legal research and draft a paper with findings on the issue. The paper could potentially be published in a research journal.
Psychiatry, Social, Psychology, Philanthropy, Business, Organizational Leadership
Proteopathy in neurological illnesses
Pathological changes to protein structures are a recurring theme in human disease, including those of the brain. For example, in Alzheimer’s disease, the proteins amyloid beta and tau undergo changes that make them “sticky” and form aggregates that interfere with normal cellular function. But, what is the precise role of these aggregates in disease? Do they cause illness, or are they better thought of as a sign of underlying cellular deficits? Would targeting these proteins or their aggregates for destruction be a useful therapeutic approach? These questions constitute a hotly debated area of research and might inspire an interested student.
Psychiatry, Neuroscience
