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
Comparison/Contrast of Cultural Differences
As a world traveler, educator, philosopher, and sociological enthusiast, I have had the unique opportunity to analyze and experience the world first-hand. This has allowed me to explore the real challenges and struggles that individual nations face and given me a broad understanding of how our world has developed. Through this study, we ask the question: What would it look like to discover specific similarities and differences between cultures? Within this project you will gain specific knowledge of two world regions in an in-depth and practical way and have the opportunity to develop an impactful response. You can choose between a musical, philosophical, religious, or political comparison, analyzing the impact of your chosen concept upon the country as a whole. During the research phase, you will examine writings from and about each region, watch interviews from individuals within those places (or interview individuals yourself, if you're lucky), and lastly, acquaint yourself with the recent developments of your concept in the culture. Using your research, you will then develop one of the following: 1) a presentation to share your findings in an engaging and interactive way (imagine the TedX presentation style). 2) a research paper illuminating your discoveries and including a personal commentary on your perspective. 3) a series of art (poems, songs, or paintings) that elaborates your findings in a meaningful and understandable way. This can also include written descriptions. Throughout this project you will develop: 1) Strong research and analysis skills. 2) The ability to synthesize information. 3) Your personal artistic and analytical voice 4) A deep understanding of your content area and its current regional and global impact
Music, Philosophy, Arts, Social Science
Social support and its impacts on mental health among adolescents
Social support is fundamental to mental health. For adolescents in particular, having a strong support system among friends and family is key to practicing good mental health. Using publicly available data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, you will examine the relationship between social support and mental health. You will also explore whether this relationship varies by social factors, such as gender, sexual orientation, and race and ethnicity.
Quantitative, Social Science, Public Health
LGBTQ school climate
Is your school a friendly environment for LGBTQ+ students? We can work together to create a survey or conduct interviews to learn more about how LGBTQ students feel in your school or how non-LGBTQ students and staff perceive LGBTQ students. With a quantitative survey, we can answer questions such as "Do white LGBTQ students feel more comfortable than non-white LGBTQ students?" or "What percentage of school staff would say they support LGBTQ students in your school?" With a qualitative survey, we can answer questions such as "How do LGBTQ students describe their experiences in the cafeteria?" or "What changes could be made to events such as school dances to make LGBTQ students feel more included?"
Social, Psychology, Creative Writing, Social Science
Social Isolation as a Contributor of Depression Among Alzheimer's Patients
Many individuals who are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease also experience symptoms of depression. People with memory decline also tend to reduce social interaction as these memory issues contribute to interpersonal difficulties. Organziations like ADDI provide access to open-source databases data related to Alzheimer's. One way to analyze these data could be to look at the relationship of social isolation as it related to depression symptoms among these patients.
Psychology, Social Science, Cognitive, Statistics
Poster - infant health
Learn how to describe the health of infants through a poster presentation. You will learn how to pull, analyze, and present the data in a visually appealing poster.
Biology, Computer Science, Social Science, Business
The Literature Review
You wanna learn more about existing research in the field of your choice? I got you. Whether it is to find patterns in past empirical findings, summarize cool theories in a field you like, or lowkey diss the methods used by past researchers, doing an extensive review of the existing literature is the way to go! You'll find research papers, read them critically, and synthesize what you've found. Together, we'll go through the criteria of a "good" research paper, the ways to go about obtaining research papers, and talk about the findings you come across. Choose this project if you're down to read a lot and want to feel like an utter expert on a topic!
Social, Psychology, Social Science, Statistics
How to Get Things Done
Setting - and achieving - our goals can be a daunting process. Yet, a wealth of psychological evidence has documented how we can best succeed in fulfilling our goals. In this project students can track their own goals while learning cutting-edge psychological science behind motivation and goal pursuit. Through this project students will gain greater insight into their own goals and behaviors and will gain a grasp on social psychological perspectives underlying motivation and self-regulation.
Social, Psychology, Social Science, Statistics
Food and food systems
Exploring the process of how your food gets to your table and the different political and social factors that contribute to food insecurity.
Arts, Social Science, Nutrition, Public Health, Organizational Leadership
The Far Reaches of Diabetes
This project can explore the long-lasting and far-reaching effects that Type II Diabetes has on the human body. Diabetic patients face a risk of chronic pain and debilitation when considering the increased possibility of developing neuropathy. This project can help raise awareness of diabetes and the secondary diseases that may result from it. The end result can take the form of a podcast or public advisory warning about proper health and nutrition for prevention of diabetes and diabetic neuropathy.
Psychiatry, Biology, Neuroscience, Psychology, Social Science, Cognitive
Twentieth-Century Social Movements Across Time and Space
The project will give you the chance to explore a variety of popular uprisings and social movements that emerged during moments of great unrest (the post-WWI moment, the early Cold War, the late 1960s, the many revolutions of 1989). Students can use the project to focus on a single social movement, or choose to compare more than one.
Social Science
Beginner Research Paper on Immigration Attitudes
How do Americans feel about immigrants? This project presents an exciting opportunity to delve into the complex realm of attitudes towards immigration in the United States. Whether it involves examining the influence of public perceptions about immigrants on policy preferences or understanding how attitudes differ based on factors like citizenship status, political ideology, or media influence, there are numerous ways to study immigration. I'll guide you through the research process from question conception, data analysis, and academic writing. If you're keen on producing a scientific research paper related to migration, this project is a fantastic opportunity for you.
Social, Social Science
How does the use of generative AI (such as ChatGPT) affect our ability to work?
There has been a lot of talk recently about generative AI, especially with the advent of ChatGPT from OpenAI. However, with that, there are a lot of questions around what it can be used for in our lives. Some that come to mind that we could explore together: What are ways we can maximize creativity and learning with the use of tools like ChatGPT? What strategies can we use to address some of the common errors tools like ChatGPT makes while using it for our work?
Psychology, Economics, Social Science, Statistics
Religious Pluralism Blog
Curious about how religions are formed, how the grow, and how they influence cultures, start wars, change history? Dive into the background and theory behind a variety of religions and create a multimedia blog to help educate others.
Arts, History, Languages, Social Science
Why is the U.S. supporting the war in Ukraine?
In general, why do countries go to war? And when do other countries decide to help them? This project might entail reading scholarly literature, gathering and analyzing data, and presenting results in the form of an essay, op-ed, or other platform of your choosing. If interested, you could explore these questions from a historical perspective using online archival resources.
Social, Social Science
Child Health Policy Analysis
When new legislation is introduced, it is crucial to understand how similar policies have or have not been effective historically. A great project idea for a student interested in public health and policy would be to select a law focused on a specific public health topic (i.e. vaccine requirements, gun safety laws, mental health access). From there, the student can identify exactly what the law was meant to achieve, and then review public health/statistical databases and case reports to help determine if the enacted legislation achieved its desired effect. The student can then review the literature and propose evidence based changes to the selected policy based on this review.
Biology, Psychology, Social Science, Medicine
Asian American Mental Health
What are the cultural factors that impact mental health for Asian Americans? In our work together, we can think through your specific interest in Asian American mental health and explore how various systemic, cultural, historical, and social factors impact Asian Americans in this country today.
Psychology, Creative Writing, Social Science
"History is Written by Victors"
Choose one event in history that you are interested in. Research three different memorials, monuments, or museums dedicated to this event. This is a good opportunity to examine bias in historical records and public memory—what gets remembered and what is lost over time? What is important to people now versus what was important to people in the past? Who is history written for?
Arts, History, Literature, Creative Writing, Social Science
Data scientist pipeline: sentiment online
This project can teach you the pipeline for becoming an independent data scientist! Answering interesting questions often involves learning how to find data “in the wild”— ethically. We can learn to use an open API to get raw data, clean it, and analyze it. We will then discuss the ethical implications of collecting and using data for social science projects. We will apply computational methods chosen appropriately for your question of interest, perhaps scoping a project to study how people on the internet (Twitter, Reddit, etc) feel about a particular issue, like climate change or COVID-19, through the language they use. We can discuss computational tools for this task-- traditional statistics? Machine learning classification? What are the pros and cons of each computational tool? The final project can be an analysis of your findings, blog post, or academic-style paper discussion.
Social Science, AI/ML, Statistics
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
The Proposal
Do you have a vague research idea but have no clue where to start? Then this is the project for you! By working on a research proposal, you'll learn how to define your research questions, pick the best research methodology, and learn some cool stats to answer those questions. Together, we'll discuss the challenges your research project may face, pros/cons of your methods, and the potential significance of your findings. At the end of this project, you'll have a "research proposal" that should convince any reader of the importance of your project (and hope that they'll agree to fund your research)!
Social, Psychology, Social Science, Statistics