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
Bark and Bloom: Are Dogs the solution the to Mental Health Crisis?
Create a podcast on the positive effects of Dog-Human relationships! Dogs release oxytocin, a critical hormone in connectedness and love. Let's talk with various guests about how their dogs have helped them through a hard time.
Social
The Role of Military Service on Political Attitudes
Military service often demands that the person enlisted respect the Constitution and American founding values. But people enter military service from many walks of life. How does experience in the military affect one's attitudes about American political institutions and democracy as a whole?
Social, Statistics
Who are You? An exploration of intersectionality
Intersectionality is defined as overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage and how that impacts social standing and identity. In this project, we will explore systemic oppression and how it affects those closest to us. This project is meant to be a case study of yourself or someone of your choosing to explore the overlap of various identities and the policies and practices that influence those. This project requires deep reflective work and we will explore concepts of positionality and unconscious bias. Similarly, you will become familiarized with various qualitative research methods such as ethnography and grounded theory.
Social
The In's and Out's of Research Methods and Statistics
Have you ever been interested in designing a study to investigate human behaviour? to better understand which statistical procedure is the best to use for your data analysis? I can help you understand the theory and statistical procedures which go into designing psychological experiments and analyzing the data. I love research methods and statistics and would be more than thrilled to supervise and mentor a project where we develop a psychological study of your choice! For example, we can work on developing a project which analyzes the effect of self-esteem on blame. In such a project, we would learn about the history of fundamental attribution error, explore possible independent and dependent variables for the study and the best possible way to measure them, perform critical data analysis using the appropriate statistical test, and draw meaningful conclusions from the results. This project can culminate in a conference paper, a journal article or an oral presentation.
Social, Cognitive
How does mindfulness reduce anxiety?
This research idea would allow the student to investigate some of the mechanisms through which both mindfulness and anxiety act, and draw connections between the two to determine how they interact. Through searching existing literature online in research databases, the student would learn to conduct a literature review on a given topic and identify gaps in the literature. The review could be written up and submitted for publication to a scientific high school journal.
Social, Psychology, Cognitive
Factors that determine your level of empathy
Empathy is an emotional reaction to someone else's feelings or it is the ability of "putting oneself in someone else's situation". Have you ever wondered which factors determine your level of empathy? In this project, we can read about previous scientific studies that test the effects of age, gender, attractiveness, and other factors on the level of empathy. After reading previous studies, we will identify a gap in the research literatature and propose to test a factor that has not been tested before. We will design a method and write a research proposal paper.
Neuroscience, Social
Develop a protocol for your own systematic review
Systematic reviews are one form of research that can help fill a gap in what we don't know about a specific topic. Systematic reviews are like literature reviews, except much more systematic as it follows a research protocol. They are much more extensive than literature reviews because you are trying to capture every published article to fully describe your topic based on a wide breadth of evidence. What you would do is choose a topic that we don't know very much about, such as evidence based interventions in jail populations or evidence based interventions in local public health departments. I can work with you to develop a concrete topic area. Then we would work together to develop your own protocol to conduct the systematic review. These typically can lead to academic publications (I have 3 currently published). If you are interested in learning how systematic reviews work as a support team member, I also have an active protocol that we are conducting with partners at Michigan State.
Social, Psychology, Statistics
How do immigrants interact with one another? How do they shape the US?
Projects related to this question would examine how immigrants are shaping the US and how they are being shaped by the US. As immigrants continue to flow into the US and hail from increasingly diverse places, how do our understandings of diversity and interaction between immigrants change?
Social
Community/Applied Psychology Research
"Don't find fault, find a remedy"- Henry Ford Do you see a problem in the real world affecting the people around you? Many of these problems can be tackled through applied psychology research. It all starts with an identified problem and leads to problem analysis, analysis of potential solutions, implementation of solutions, progress monitoring, evaluation of results (and maybe going back to the drawing board if it didn't work). We can at least start to tackle issues as narrow as an individual's paralyzing anxiety whenever they leave their home or parents struggling to control their rambunctious child, to major issues like systemic racism in schools and high teen suicide rates.
Social
Cancel culture & evaluations of moral character
We hear in the news that a beloved celebrity cheated on their spouse, a famous YouTuber gives a half-hearted apology, or a politician is involved in a money-laundering scandal. Even if these individuals once had a positive reputation, one immoral action can lead to public "cancellation". From this topic a few different research questions can emerge: -What is the function of pubically signaling moral praise or blame of individuals? -What does it take for someone to be "cancelled" or seen as immoral? How does this differ from being seen as a "hero" or "saint"? -Can immoral or "cancelled" individuals be redeemed in the public eye or forgiven? What would it take to do so? -What amount of reward is appropriate for "heroes" vs. punishment for "villians"? First we would start by looking at examples in pop-culture - what seems the same or different between those who are "loved" vs those who are "hated" in the public eye? Next, we would turn to the academic literature to see what research exists on this topic. Then, we would develop a research question and think of ways to test it. Many times, great research questions come from real-world experiences and intuitions! Students will learn how to formulate their ideas into quantifiable, research questions, test their hypothesis using validated scales or novel measures, and find out new information about our social world. As a take-away students can create an academic research poster, which is typical for academic conferences, a short research presentation, or a research proposal outlining how they would test their research question.
Social, Psychology, Social Science, Cognitive
How Representation of Mental Health Disorders and Treatment in Media Impacts Public Perception
My background in sociology, social work, and marriage and family therapy creates an opportunity to help students explore topics such as human behavior, societal functioning, popular media and related social consequences, mental health disorders, and mental health treatment. Students will have the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills related to the previously mentioned topics, discover how media presentations impact perceptions of mental disorders and treatment, and learn useful research techniques. Information could be gathered using data from existing or secondary sources in combination with survey or interview style questionnaires. Students could review movies, television, music, popular press, celebrity cases, and social media along with peer reviewed academic articles on this topic to create a literature review. Survey or interview style questionnaires could be used to assess the general public's perception on this research topic. The goal for this project would be to create a scientific research paper on the impacts of how mental health disorders and treatment are represented in popular media sources. The outcomes and research directions are vast with a topic such as this.
Social
There's So Much We Can Analyze
Is there's a book or even a genre that you want to analyze outside of school? Whether a childhood favorite novel or even one you haven't had the chance to read? Or a TV series or movie based on one of your favorite books or vice versa? We can definitely do that here! This can involve comparing two mediums, or exploring the work in chronological order, analyzing the narrative and themes. For example, you can compare the Percy Jackson books and the movies! Or even compare two different books in the same genre, explore two different authors who wrote during the same time, how their backgrounds and experiences might have influenced their writing. It's up to you!
Social
Writing a scientific review
In this project, you will write a scientific review-style paper on a topic related to psychology or neuroscience. Topics could range from "emotion regulation is adolescence" to "how does body awareness impact emotions?". This process will teach you how to find, access, and critically analyze existing scientific literature and how to assemble primary literature into a scientific review. You will gain skills in writing and editing, as well as an in-depth knowledge of your chosen research topic.
Neuroscience, Social
Sick and Tired of being sick and tired: Black Women's Health Project
“I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired” said Fannie Lou Hamer in 1964. This project could be a research paper featuring qualitative interviews with Black women about their mental and physical health. What are ways we can uplift women of color in your community? We will use the Community-Based Participatory Action Research method to solicit information from participants about the role of government and policy on their health. Then, we can develop a list of community and policy level strategies to submit to your local governmental agency.
Social
Virtual Meeting Fatigue, Social Equity, and Avatars
[This study is part of an actual project being funded by the National Science Foundation] The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of remote work, highlighting barriers to well-being, equity, and inclusion. Virtual meeting fatigue, the exhaustion that occurs after long periods of videoconferencing, has been identified as especially harmful to women and people of color, compounding common face-to-face inequities like unequal talking time and interruptions in meetings. To develop more inclusive and equitable remote workspaces, this research asks: How can future virtual meeting platforms better support well-being and social equity? To address this question, the project aims to identify general best practices for virtual meetings among diverse teams to minimize fatigue and improve well-being, equity, and inclusion. You will conduct a survey with remote workers to examine how virtual meeting features correlate with user welfare, comparing results by gender, race and age to determine whether certain populations are more susceptible to virtual meeting fatigue. You will also examine the potential use of avatars as a means of reducing negative self-focus, which previous reseach suggests is a major contributor to zoom fatigue.
Social, Psychology, Social Science
Exercise & Emotional Well-being: A Mixed Methods Project
There is a large body of literature linking exercise to emotional well-being (e.g., increased positive affect, reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms, improved focus); however, further research is needed to understand what types of exercise are most beneficial for certain individuals (i.e., the "what works best for whom" question we are often asking in Psychology). The student will put together a brief (<5 minute) anonymous web-based survey to be distributed to their peers. We will ask at least 20 participants to rate how stressed, sad, happy, and calm they feel on a scale from (0) not at all to (5) extremely each day for five consecutive days. Each day, we will also ask them whether they exercised and, if so, what type of exercise they participated in and for how long. On the last day only, we will ask them to respond to a short open-response question asking them "what is your favorite type of exercise and why?" All study procedures will be approved by the IRB. We will then analyze the quantitative data using Excel or R statistics (depending on student preference) and use qualitative methods for the open-ended question to understand (1) how daily exercise affects mood and (2) what individuals believe is the "active ingredient" that makes their chosen form of exercise enjoyable. The student will develop a paper suitable for journal publication or a research symposium presentation to disseminate their findings. Through this project, the student will learn about survey design, measurement, IRB approval, statistics, and dissemination of research as they would in a college-level research methods class.
Social, Psychology
Leveraging Psychology to Help Bridge Political Divides
Over the past few decades, Americans have become increasingly polarized. How can we take insights from psychology to help people better understand those who are "on the other side" of the political spectrum? This project could involve reading articles/books, interviewing exercises, and more to identify potential interventions. It could take the form of a research paper, research transformed into a blog post, video or podcast format, or an online survey where we collect our own data.
Social, Cognitive
Work from home couples experience more parenting stress lower relationship happiness
While the COVID-19 global pandemic work from home (WFH) protocols have given some couples (predominantly middle-class individuals with traditional office jobs) more flexibility when it comes to taking care of children and household, it has also presented new challenges of sharing space with your partner and losing dedicated privacy and work hours when simultaneously taking care of your children. With more and more offices opting for a permanent fixture of hybrid- or full-time-WFH positions, it is important to understand both the benefits and costs to couples and families, where more time together might actually mean less quality time and more stress. Research could explore the pros and cons, and begin to understand if there is an optimal balance that can be reached to provide working moms and dads with greater flexibility but not detract from the joys of being a parent nor the happiness in a romantic relationship.
Social
Hospital Ranking & Communities
Review population demographics of the highest ranked hospitals in the country. Identify if highly ranked organizations primarily serve affluent communities that are likely to have better health outcomes.
Social, Public Health
Writing a scientific review of a topic of your choice
In this project you will write a scientific review-style paper on a topic of your choice. This process will teach you how to find, access, and critically analyze existing scientific literature and how to assemble primary literature into a scientific review. You will gain skills in writing and editing, as well as an in-depth knowledge of your chosen research topic.
Social, Psychology, Cognitive
