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
A Bee sCience: A discovery of current trends in U.S. bee populations
Research data of bee populations in the United States and perform statistical analysis using Python and/or R with hopes of identifying information that may be useful to farmers who rely on bees for pollination. The Great Sunflower Project has data available at greatsunflower.org, so the scope of the project would focus on cleaning and analyzing data rather than collecting. The student would come up with three questions to answer and write a short paper on their findings. The final deliverable would be the creation of "TED like" presentation of the project.
Computer Science
Surveying impacts of long-term space travel on the human body
A one-way trip to Mars takes approximately 6 months. During this long journey, the astronauts on board must deal with the harsh environment of space such as radiation and microgravity as well as isolation, communication delays, etc. The student can write a review paper surveying the existing technologies and strategies as well as ongoing advancements to counteract the effects of these factors on astronaut physiology, psychology, sensorimotor functionality, and overall health.
Physics, Engineering, Computer Science, Math
Making software fast (and safe)
The Rust programming language is quickly taking the world by storm. It is one of the fastest languages in terms of execution times (80x faster than Python in many cases), yet also one of the easiest languages to write in. In this project, I will help you learn to program in Rust, and how to port software written in other languages, such as Python, Java, and C/C++. We will use benchmarking tools to measure the speed of Rust code to equivalent code in other languages, and write a paper about the different languages' strengths and weaknesses.
Computer Science, AI/ML
Help catch bad guys, with image filtering!
One of the most common tasks in image processing is image denoising. From pictures on your cell phone to the notoriously low-quality images of gas station security cameras, a noise-free image is a desirable image. In this project, one will learn the basics of denoising images using a variety of modern image processing techniques for their desired imaging modality. This could be medical imaging, optical imaging, or even radar imaging!
Engineering, Computer Science, Math, AI/ML
The Future of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Neuroradiology
From automated detection of intracranial hemorrhage to prognostication of stroke patient outcome, machine learning- and artificial intelligence-based tools are increasingly prevalent in neuroradiology. The question remains - how will these tools affect the future of radiology? In this project, the student will conduct a literature review recent advances in AI/ML and make their conjectures about how these tools will impact radiology workflows, patient care, and the future of the field.
Neuroscience, Computer Science, AI/ML, Cognitive, Medicine
Vaccination coverage analysis & opportunities
Using open-access datasets, we can evaluate trends and distributions of vaccination coverage against common infections (e.g. DTaP) to identify geospatial and demographic gaps in immunity. This can provide public health departments nationally with a better sense of how to distribute new vaccination efforts.
Biology, Computer Science, Business
Audiovisual Toys in Unity
Ever wanted to make an instrument on your computer? It's super easy! Using Unity for the computer interaction and ChucK for the audio synthesis, you will learn how to make an instrument that you, your friends and family can play. It will look awesome, too (example in picture)!
Music, Computer Science, Math
Visualizing virus structures with microscopy techniques
Viruses have caused pandemics and epidemics that have impacted millions globally, especially with the spread of Mpox, SARS-CoV-2, MERS, SARS, Zika virus, Ebola virus, and HIV in recent decades. But what do these viruses look like? What do we know about the protein structures of viruses? Various microscopy techniques, ranging from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and tomography (cryo-ET), have been used to visualize viruses - both inside and outside of cells. You would choose a virus of choice and review the literature to determine what types of imaging techniques have been used to study this virus's structure, what each technique has revealed about this virus's mechanism of infection, and what questions remain regarding this virus's protein structure. You would synthesize your findings in a scientific research paper that shows how each microscopy technique provides new information about this virus's structure, and what information can be leveraged from the combination of these microscopy techniques.
Biology, Arts, Engineering, Computer Science
Using neural networks to solve physics problems
Neural networks have remarkable predictive power for solving all kinds of dynamical systems, and their applicability to computational physics is only recently being explored. In this project, you would explore using neural networks to solve physics problems. A simple starting example could be writing a recurrent NN to predict the evolution of a double pendulum, but there are a lot of directions we could take this project, such as solving quantum or electromagnetic field equations, N-body simulations, or inverse design of electromagnetic components.
Physics, Computer Science, AI/ML
Case Study Reporting on Rare Diseases
Case reports and case series or rather case study research are descriptive studies that are prepared for illustrating novel, unusual, or atypical features identified in patients in medical practice, and they potentially generate new research questions. They are empirical inquiries or investigations of a patient or a group of patients in a natural, real world clinical setting. Case study research is a method that focuses on the contextual analysis of a number of events or conditions and their relationships. Case research is a beneficial tool and learning experience in graduate medical education and among novice researchers. Rare disease patients have cases that extremely unique to the medical field due to frequency, hidden states, and lack of knowledge by medical & research professionals. By creating a case report for a certain kind of rare disease, we could help with the diagnosis and the mitigation of rare diseases, which heavily occur in young children at high mortality rates.
Biology, Physics, Computer Science
Choose your own adventure story!
"You are in a dark room and you hear a knock at the door" "what do you want to do?" 1) open door 2) explore the room In this project, you will have the full creative freedom to build a choose your own story adventure game with as many twists and turns your heart desires! This project would teach you the basic principles of programming, such as how loops and functions work!
Computer Science, Math, Statistics
Scoring a Scene
I will guide the student through the process of scoring a sample scene from a film. I will help to come up with the initial idea for the scene and then guide the student through the process of arranging their piece of music, making sure to hit each moment of the scene.
Music, Arts, Computer Science
Detect Blood Pressure Pulses
Build a signal processing algorithm which can tell when a heart beat occurs reliably! In cardiovascular research, it is extremely important to have reliable detection of heart beats in a blood pressure waveform. However, heart beats can look very different between patients and even for different regions in the same patient! Let's build a method which does this better than what I can currently find in the literature. :)
Biology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Math
Use of Data Science / Stats techniques to answer interesting questions
What makes a popular song popular? What identifies fake news from real news? There are data everywhere and I am excited to help students apply stats and data science techniques to help answer questions like these and many more!
Engineering, Computer Science
Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Education
This project will investigate how changes imposed by COVID-19 affect several metrics of educational quality, including changes in GPA, levels of stress, etc. Some examples of predictor variables include a student's region of residence (and vaccination rate in that region), their types of hobbies or extracurriculars, and the mode of instruction they received during the height of the pandemic. To accomplish this project, you will need to create and broadcast a survey to gather the data, which you will interrogate using machine learning and statistical analysis techniques.
Computer Science, Chemistry, AI/ML
Apply machine learning methods to new datasets
It is always fun to try applying machine learning techniques to datasets to find new insights. This can be something as simple as data from video games or other publicly available data such as automobile traffic, weather data, or biological data.
Computer Science
Learning in a Recurrent Neural Network
With this project you will train a recurrent neural network to do a task of your choosing -- maybe one that animals or people are trained to do. What aspects of training affect how well the network learns or how it solves the task? With this project you will strengthen your Python and Machine Learning skills, and you can delve into the neurobiology of learning as much or as little as you want. You could create a scientific paper, blog post, presentation, or video about your work. You could also explore how biological constraints on neural networks affect learning and task performance, or work with different learning algorithms.
Neuroscience, Computer Science, AI/ML
Graph Theoretic Model of Procrastination
In this project we'll look at an existing model of procrastination in graph theory. Procrastination can be significantly expensive, so can we augment the model to help agents? For example, my M.S. thesis added competition to reduce the impact of procrastination. What other tools help combat procrastination, and how can we formally analyze their effectiveness? This project requires significant mathematical maturity (e.g., ability to write and read proofs, familiarity or ability to quickly learn discrete math, etc.).
Philosophy, Computer Science, Economics, Math
An introduction to Optimal Control Theory and its applications
In this project, we will explore the origins and uses of optimal control theory in the context of biological models. Consider a dynamical system where the dynamics are captured by a model described by ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Suppose also that this system has variable(s) which can be externally controlled. How can this external element be controlled in order to produce the “best”, or optimal, outcome that is specified by a pre-specified goal? The theory that seeks to answer this question, often called optimal control theory or dynamic optimization, has been applied in several areas from the biological sciences to economics. Prerequisites: 1. Basic knowledge of multi-variable calculus 2. Some exposure to differential equations 3. Coding experience in MATLAB or Python Suggested (book) reference: Optimal Control Applied to Biological Models, by Suzanne Lenhart and John T. Workman
Computer Science, Math, Statistics
This network is now mine
Networks are all around us, but are they secure? The answer is no. With this project we will be building a Rogue Access Point in a network we control in order to learn more about Computer Networks, how they are set up, how they work and why they are not secure. We will then come up with ways of how to make them secure, implement and test them.
Computer Science
