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
Social Media and Time Use
The use of social media has been linked with negative mental health outcomes among adolescence. Based on the data available, you can test and visualize the trends on social media time use among teenagers and compare those trends by gender identities, race and ethnicity, and other characteristics such as family income, public or private school and the safety of their neighborhood they live in. In this project, you will learn to define and narrow down your research question, identify and collect data, pick an appropriate methods to analyze the data for your purpose and present your work using your own creativity and outlet of interest.
Economics, Business
(Don't?) Judge a Movie by its Trailer
Can we predict a movie's box-office success based on the number of views its trailer receives on YouTube? What about its number of likes? A student pursuing this project might learn about web scraping, time lag effects, and identifying relevant predictors.
Economics
How does economic hardship affect regional voting patterns?
Certain areas of the US economy have been hard-hit by forces such as automation and globalization. Many observers believe such forces shapes the behavior and preferences of voters in these distressed regions. A research project would analyze how economic hardship influences voters choices for political candidates as well as policy issues in state or local referendums.
Economics, Finance
Health Equity in Underprivileged Communities
This project aims to empower inexperienced students to explore the concept of health equity by utilizing open-source data to investigate disparities in healthcare access and outcomes in underprivileged communities. Students will learn how to gather, analyze, and interpret data, ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of health disparities and the potential for positive change. Learning Outcomes: Enhanced data gathering and analysis skills. - Improved understanding of health equity and disparities. - Awareness of the socio-economic determinants of health. - The ability to visualize and present data effectively. - A sense of empowerment to advocate for positive change in underprivileged communities.
Economics, Math, Social Science, Statistics
Grade Expectations: Homeroom Assignment and GPA
Every school has its popular advisors and the most fun homerooms, but have you ever wondered whether the homeroom you are assigned to impacts your grades for that school year? Your first thought may be to find out the average GPA for each homeroom and compare this between homerooms, but what if, by random chance, some homerooms have smarter students? Then we can't say for sure that the higher GPA is because of the homeroom you are assigned to: that group was just smarter to begin with! Much of economics is about attributing changes in outcomes to specific factors. We can run experiments on existing data and control for things we don't care about (such as the innate academic ability of the students in a homeroom) in order to tease out the answers to important and interesting questions (does your homeroom assignment matter?)
Economics
Whose Democracy Is It, Anyway?
As a student and a reporter with Bloomberg News. I've spent the past four years studying elections around the world - how people vote, why they vote, and how much those votes matter. One of the most active debates in political science is whether all votes count equally when it comes to shaping public policy. Research has shown that the opinions of the rich and well-to-do are generally reflected in new laws, while those of regular citizens have almost no correlation. For this project, we'll collect data about major legislation passed over the past thirty years as well as detailed public opinion polling about the issues in question. We'll then run statistical analysis to determine which groups have the highest likelihood of getting their desired policies passed. Our final product will be a detailed dataset showing how represented each group within society is that can be turned into a publication-ready paper!
Economics, Creative Writing, Business, Finance
Creating a Personal Website from scratch
You can have your own personal website! No experience? It is OK. In this project, you will learn everything from scratch to build a well-structured and beautiful web page. You will get familiar with basic programming languages, such as HTML, CSS, and Java Script. The final output will be a dynamic web page published online with text and images where everyone can access.
Computer Science, Economics, Math
Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Missing Inflation
Beginning in 2008, central banks have engaged in several large-scale asset purchasing programs (LSAP). Under these programs, central banks purchased trillions of dollars worth of assets from banks. The quantity theory of money states (simply) that if the quantity of money were to double then the price level should also double. Until 2021, there was no significant inflation in the United States. Even after 2021, many economists suggest that LSAPs put relatively little inflationary pressure on prices. Can we find the missing inflation or is the quantity theory of money flawed?
Economics, Math, Business, Statistics
Corporate Formation: a State by State Comparison
Have you ever wondered why so many companies are "based" in Delaware? This project involves a comparison of various aspects of corporate law in different states around the country to determine why Fortune 500 companies choose to incorporate in various jurisdictions.
Economics
Predict patient vulnerability to COVID-19
For this project you will use patient demographics such as age, gender, pre-existing conditions, to build a machine learning model to predict how likely a patient is to suffer severe illness. This model can be deployed to the frontline to triage patients and help direct attention to patients who need it the most.
Economics, AI/ML
How does ambiguity/ uncertainty aversion affect our decision making and life choices?
I'd love to explore with you business and economics phenomena that help us understand how humans think and behave, such as ambiguity (uncertainty) aversion, altruism, anchoring and framing, overconfidence effect, and more! We don't have to limit ourselves to behavioral economics though - we can certainly explore other topics from economics, business, technology, or other related fields. During our collaboration, you will learn: 1. how to research and educate yourself on chosen topic (I will help you understand it in depth during our sessions), 2. how to critically think about the concepts and opposing views, 3. how to apply business and economics concepts into practice through your project and beyond, and 4. how to convey your exploration and knowledge through an essay, research paper, and/ or a slick presentation. We will gather information and educate ourselves on chosen topics through researching academic papers and essays, reading books, exploring online courses and Ted Talks, and informational chats with industry experts. We will define your goal together at the beginning of our partnership. In my mind, the goal could include writing an essay or paper that can be later shared during your college or internship applications, or creating a “Ted Talk” presentation that you can present at your school, conference, or actual Ted Talk!
Economics, Business, Finance
Finding Value in MLB Free Agency
Every offseason there are hundreds of professional baseball players who become free agents and can be signed by any team. This project involves determining which players might be a good "value" by deciding which statistics are most important to helping a team win relative to how players are generally paid. After deciding which stats are the most important, a ranked list of "value" can be produced based on expected salaries.
Sports Analytics, Economics, Math, Statistics
Bayesian discrimination
A hot topic in recent times has been affirmative action. One theory, called bayesian discrimination, is that employers when hiring someone that is favored by affirmative action don't know if he/she got into the college because of his/her scores or because of affirmative action. Hence they prefer not to hire. Other theory poses that employers are racists, thus they don't hire minorities. I'm trying to disentangle both effects.
Economics, Business
What is a market?
This is an idea in which I'm working on that tries to develop what are the limits of a market. Why is it important? Because to determine whether a firm is a monopoly one has to first determine in what market does the firm operates in. For example, Google is a tech firm? if so why does it main source of revenue is advertising. Maybe is an advertising firm that happens to produce technology. Using quantitative methods I'm trying to systematically define in which market do firms operate in.
Economics, Business
Poverty trends
How did world poverty trends change in the last decade? Which regions improved and which did not? What are the possible explanations?
Economics, Math, Finance, Statistics
Ever wondered how a summer internship can help students?
We can work together to design a research project that looks at how summer internships affect high school students. Do they experience increased aspirations to pursue a certain career? Are they more motivated to do well at school? Do they get better grades? This project will offer you the chance to learn how to design a survey, collect data, conduct interviews, analyze data, and improve your academic writing style. I am open to working on this topic, or any other economics topic(s) of your choosing! For a previous research project, I worked with my advisor on a similar topic. Here is what we found: Recently, policymakers and researchers have explored how time spent outside of the classroom, including early work experience, can affect educational outcomes and reduce inequality across racial and socioeconomic groups. Although research has demonstrated that high-intensity work-based learning programs improve high school graduation and post-secondary enrollment, little is known about the effects of stand-alone private sector employment experiences on student outcomes. We study a unique program that brokers employer-paid summer job internships for Boston public school youth across 150 private sector firms in a variety of industries such as healthcare, finance, biotechnology, higher education, and real estate. Using data from school administrative records, we employ both fixed effects and matching models to estimate the impact of receiving a private sector placement on both high-school and post-secondary outcomes. Both models show similar impacts on outcomes that can be measured repeatedly over time with significant improvements in high school attendance and course failures associated with having had a private sector placement during the summer. Furthermore, we use our matching model to explore outcomes that occur only once, finding that private sector job experience increases standardized test taking as well as the likelihood of on-time high school graduation and college enrollment. These results suggest that private sector employers have an important role to play in the “ecosystem” of summer jobs, beyond government sponsored programs, to support experiences that help prepare youth for both educational and career pathways into adulthood.
Languages, Economics, Math, Business, Statistics
China's Rise in the Global Order
Interested in exploring the complexities behind China's miraculous growth? Choose an area of focus within the context of China's rise; some ideas include: exploring the drivers of domestic and foreign policy; the transition of China's economy; policies and impacts of foreign direct investment; and the relationship between policy and the motivations and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.
Economics
Uninvolved parents
since becoming parents every couple thinks about their children future. Some off them might not be to involve in their child life. Which means the child attitude hits different in different environments. We can find what was the reason to these parents to not be part of their children's life, if they cause any mental health problem to their kids for not being part of their life. If they have sent any child for therapy and how long did this treatment take (months or years). How much money have they spent and was it worthy for not being involve to the child life but instead running after the career.
Economics, Math, Finance, Statistics
Occupational Licensing
In the 1950s only 5% of jobs required an occupational license in the United States, but by 2018 nearly a quarter of jobs required licensing. Though it is claimed that occupational licensing improves quality of products and services in a sector, some critics claim that licensing can harm consumers and innovation. Are consumers hurt by the increases in occupational licensing? Are prices increased when licensing is implemented and how does that impact consumers? Is there an artificial minimization of supply in these licensed sectors?
Economics, Finance
The Youth Perspective
Oftentimes, many issues that are decided in legislative bodies most affect children and young adults, yet Congress is one of the oldest in history. Do we have a gerontocracy? How can those under 30 use their firsthand experience to create change within our political system on issues like gun control, school systems, and drug use? This project could either be a proposal or a collection of op-eds.
Philosophy, History, Economics, Creative Writing, Social Science
