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
COVID-19 Pandemic Impact on Child Food Insecurity
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools transitioned to virtual learning, limiting students' access to free and reduced price meal programs. Students would investigate how this additional barrier impacted students' food security status and associated health outcomes including BMI and mental health. They could investigate one particular region, or compare discrepancies between states or districts. Students would write up a paper outlining what they learned and recommendations.
Healthcare, Public Health
Attitudes towards municipal tap water
Many people have varied feelings about drinking tap water, especially after the events in Flint, Michigan. A student could survey people from all over their city to understand their attitudes towards city tap water. They could also collect some demographic data to see what factors may correlate with different attitudes. Do people in a certain neighborhood think alike? Do people who drink well water have different attitudes about city water? Do women have different attitudes than men? Does family income correlate with attitudes? A student would also learn to develop a good samples frame, design non-biased survey questions, and have the opportunity to analyze local data!
Social Science, Public Health, Statistics
The Development and Treatment of Cancer
Cancer is a collection of related diseases united by unregulated cell replication. Certain viruses, such as HPV, are considered oncoviruses, meaning they are cancer causing. Different types of cancer, and even different subtypes, have drastically different outcomes. For example, patients with HPV-mediated cancers are more sensitized to radiation, meaning lower doses of treatment may be equally effective as higher doses but with fewer side effects. In this project, students can pick a specific type of cancer and do a deep-dive on the mutation that causes the cancer, the treatment, and current/future therapies.
Biology, Cancer, Public Health
Community-needs assessment and implementation of evidence-based behavioral intervention
Conduct a needs-finding assessment to identify health disparities in your community or school. Use qualitative research methods such as focus groups, key informant interviews, PhotoVoice and write a proposal of actionable solutions. This project will be heavily focused on "field work" and gathering information from community members' lived experiences.
Public Health
Gut Feelings: How do the microbes in your gut relate to mental health and how can we leverage this link to inform interventions?
Recently, research on the link between the gut microbiome (the community of bacteria, viruses, and other microbes that live in the gastrointestinal tract) and mental illness has been accelerating. This work has established a potential role for the gut microbiome in illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and co-morbid physical conditions like IBS. This project will take a deep dive into the connection between the brain and gut to examine interventions for common mental health issues that target the gut microbiome (like diet, probiotics, and mind-body practices). You will learn how to read and critically evaluate research articles, organize your findings into a coherent structure, write a review paper, and even exercise your artistic/creative skills in designing accessible and informative figures.
Biology, Public Health, Statistics
Student Experiences with Mental Health Resources
What are high school student's experiences with their school's mental health resources? Particularly during and after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, high school students have increasingly struggled with mental health challenges are in great need of support. This qualitative research project would include a short literature review on the current state of student mental health, and a short survey on student experiences with mental health
Public Health
Podcast or Video
Get creative and have fun by putting together a radio show or educational video to get across the important points of your project.
Environmental Science, Public Health
Assessing the Impact of Online Health Education on Awareness and Behavioral Changes
Skills Required: Research design and methodology Data collection and analysis Literature review and synthesis Statistical analysis Communication and report writing Description: This project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of online health education in creating awareness and promoting positive behavioral changes among a specific target population. This project will provide the student with hands-on experience in conducting research, evaluating the effectiveness of health interventions, and analyzing data. Additionally, it will allow them to contribute to the field of public health by generating evidence-based knowledge that can inform future health education initiatives.
Public Health, Medicine
Healthcare & Transportaition
Understand the impact transportation has on health outcomes for individuals across the country.
Social, Public Health
Intersection of Depression and Diabetes
Students would use publicly available data to assess the prevalence of depression medication use stratified by chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.
Social Science, Public Health
What Drives Healthcare Innovation?
The intersection between AI, technology, big data, and medicine draws increasing attention amongst health care leaders. With massive advancements in health data for prophylactic management, telemedicine, and robotic surgeries, healthcare innovation centers are in high demand. Housed in either private industry or academic research universities, healthcare innovation centers drive cross-sector collaboration to advance the art and science of medicine; however, not all innovation centers succeed. In this project, you will interview healthcare leaders from innovation centers across the country, uncovering which factors drive centers to successful innovation and which factors leave centers unable to change the status quo.
Public Health, Finance, Organizational Leadership, Medicine
Literature and Medicine
Explore a text and describe how medicine/illness is viewed/portrayed in literature (classics, novels, etc.) - how has this changed over time? How has our definition of medicine evolved?
Biology, Healthcare, Public Health
Review Article: Exercise Training and Peripheral Arterial Disease
It is generally known that exercise can improve symptoms of peripheral arterial disease (PAD). This project can investigate the existing data and analyze how exercise has been linked to treating patients with PAD, and can seek to determine if a threshold for exercise is associated with improving symptoms of PAD. This can be presented in the form of an essay, scientific research paper, poster, or abstract. Additionally, analogous projects can be created with ideas similar to this one (ie looking at the impacts of exercise on stress, grades, other diseases, etc.).
Biology, Surgery, Public Health
Availability of Mental Health Services Over time in the U.S.
Use publicly available datasets (for instance, the National Mental Health Services Survey) to analyze the availability of mental health services in a U.S. state over time. Plot the type of service offered and analyze the demographics of people served. How does availability of services for children compare to adults and older adults? What proportion of facilities accept Medicaid/Medicare/public funds (making services accessible to low income populations)?
Cognitive, Healthcare, Public Health
Communication of Complicated or Technical Topics
Reading and understanding a complicated/technical topic is one thing, but translating the idea into a coherent message for a target audience is an entirely different challenge. Whether you are trying to communicate the results of a scientific study as a public health announcement, or share the conclusion and practical implications of a recently published legal decision, there is great value in breaking down high level information into understandable elements. Through this project, we would work together to read technical papers in your area of interest, and then translate the content for certain audiences, which would culminate with a portfolio of various methods of communication (presentations, short legal memorandums, social media infographics, podcast episodes etc).
Public Health
Perspectives on the Future Applications and Challenges of mRNA Vaccines
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the implementation of mRNA vaccine technology, which has proven to be a global success in preventing hospitalizations and severe disease. However, many challenges remain including their efficacy in maintaining robust long-term immunity, mitigation and early detection of immunologic side effects, application in prevention of other diseases, and practical expansion to under-resourced regions. This project aims to review emerging ideas to improve the way vaccines are designed and administered. Students will learn how to conduct a targeted literature search, assess for quality of original research articles, synthesize information, and write a literature review.
Biology, Cancer, Public Health
Project Management In a Healthcare Setting
Project Management Execution- Would you like to discover how to design an awesome strategy for improving how things work in healthcare? In this project you will learn about quality management and the operational/business side of healthcare. Together we can work on conceptualizing and implementing a set of tools to manage and operate a healthcare project from start to finish. A few examples of project topics in this space include reducing medication errors and programs to combat physician burnout. This includes determining areas for improvement, formulating a hypothesis, collecting data and analyzing systems to see where improvements can be made, drafting an initial proposal to present to management with effective communication methods, and defining metrics that could be used to evaluate the success of your proposal. You will eventually write a final paper detailing the problem you’re trying to solve, potential methods for solving it, and reviewing case studies from existing literature. Skills- Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Basic Tableau
Biology, Public Health
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
Interpreting Outcomes of Oral Surgery Topics
This project will focus on introducing the student to fundamental topics of oral surgery including wisdom teeth surgeries, dental implants. The student will then choose to focus on a specific area of oral surgery and look at scientific literature to explore how different factors may alter outcomes.
Ethics, Public Health
The effect of plant-based diets on athletic performance
Plant-based diets ("vegetarian" or "vegan") are growing in popularity and have been adopted by an increasing number of elite athletes. Plant-based diets often contain more fiber and carbohydrates, but potentially less protein than traditional omnivorous diets. How does this impact athletic performance (i.e. strength or endurance), and how does this compare to diets containing animal meat or other dietary patterns?
Biology, Nutrition, Public Health, Medicine
