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.

Check out some projects

Fan Cost Index & Attendance

As COVID comes to an end, a major concern of all major professional sports league (NBA, MLB, NFL & NHL) is the return of max attendance throughout their stadiums and venues. Yet this recovery has not come as quickly as some may have hoped and that can be due to a multitude of reasons. One major variable that would be interesting to look into is the cost of attending these events as it seems these events never go down in price. Cost of attendance could be a major deterrent for fans as they need to decide where discretionary money is spent. Analyzing the cost of attending sporting events by league, team, and region could be a major insight into why attendance may be stagnant.

History, Sports Analytics, Business, Finance

Gregory

Launching and Leading a Start Up

Launch your own company and officially register the business as well as develop the skills to grow it into an enterprise. This project will go over and result in the following deliverables being completed: -Business and LLC creation and registration -Receiving the business Tax ID -Creating a business website -Launching Facebook Advertisement Campaigns -A/B development and refines of Facebook Ads -Operations management -Scaling for the future -Fundraising

Finance, Organizational Leadership

David

Robots, Bubbles, and Efficient Markets

There's an old joke in economics that goes like this. A financial economist is walking with his student, and the student sees a $100 dollar bill on the ground. The student is excited, and goes to pick it up, but the professor stops him and says, "there couldn't be $100 on the ground. If there were, someone would have already picked it up!" The professor is expressing the "Efficient Markets Hypothesis", that claims all stock prices are correct, because if they weren't someone could buy and sell them to pick up $100. Of course, many economists don't believe this! There is a whole school called Behavioral Economics that studies how markets fail, why prices are wrong, and the human psychology that causes these inefficient markets to emerge. Typically, behavioral economists work with volunteers, who trade stocks or play games (not the fun kind). The economist try to create price bubbles or market frenzies, and show how irrational people are. But what about AIs? We could program AI to play in these game environments together, and see if the same bubbles and market frenzies occur. Do they eventually turn into the efficient professor after playing the game many times? Can they adapt when the rules of the game are changed? What can we learn about ourselves by studying how robots behave in similar situations?

Computer Science, Economics, Math, AI/ML, Finance

Jesse

Personal Budget

Learn to build a personal budget that incorporates living expenses, charitable giving, retirement planning, insurance, and taxes. We can focus on one or all of these aspects for a detailed study and full conceptual understanding.

Finance

Jeff

Sports Injuries: Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation

In this project, you will select a sports injury and recommend injury prevention techniques to a coach and design a 6-month rehabilitation program for an injured athlete. You will learn: • Anatomy of the injured area • Common movements that cause the injury • Techniques on coping with injuries • Pros and Cons of surgery vs. no surgery • Five stages of recovery • Specific rehabilitation exercises

Finance

Karen

How to Pick A Career (That Actually Fits You)

This is a project about something I’ve been passionate about forever: careers. Because I couldn't explain this better myself, I'll share a slightly edited version of my favorite passage from one of Tim Urban's posts on careers: Society tells us a lot of things about what we should want in a career and what the possibilities are—which is weird because I’m pretty sure society knows very little about any of this. When it comes to careers, society is like your great uncle who traps you at holidays and goes on a 15-minute mostly incoherent unsolicited advice monologue, and you tune out almost the whole time because it’s super clear he has very little idea what he’s talking about and that everything he says is like 45 years outdated. Society is like that great uncle, and conventional wisdom is like his rant. Except in this case, instead of tuning it out, we pay rapt attention to every word, and then we make major career decisions based on what he says. Kind of a weird thing for us to do. Career-path-carving is definitely one of those really really deeply important things. Let’s spell out the obvious reasons why: Time. For most of us, a career (including ancillary career time, like time spent commuting and thinking about your work) will eat up somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 hours. At the moment, a long human life runs at about 750,000 hours. When you subtract childhood (~175,000 hours) and the portion of your adult life you’ll spend sleeping, eating, exercising, and otherwise taking care of the human pet you live in, along with errands and general life upkeep (~325,000 hours), you’re left with 250,000 “meaningful adult hours.” So a typical career will take up somewhere between 20% and 60% of your meaningful adult time—not something to be rash about. Quality of Life. Your career has a major effect on all the non-career hours as well. For those of us not already wealthy through past earnings, marriage, or inheritance, a career doubles as our means of support. The particulars of your career also often play a big role in determining where you live, how flexible your life is, the kinds of things you’re able to do in your free time, and sometimes even in who you end up marrying. Impact. On top of your career being the way you spend much of your time and the means of support for the rest of your time, your career triples as your primary mode of impact-making. Every human life touches thousands of other lives in thousands of different ways, and all of those lives you alter then go on to touch thousands of lives of their own. We can’t test this, but I’m pretty sure that you can select any 80-year-old alive today, go back in time 80 years, find them as an infant, throw the infant in the trash, and then come back to the present day and find a countless number of things changed. All lives make a large impact on the world and on the future—but the kind of impact you end up making is largely within your control, depending on the values you live by and the places you direct your energy. Whatever shape your career path ends up taking, the world will be altered by it. Identity. In our childhoods, people ask us about our career plans by asking us what we want to be when we grow up. When we grow up, we tell people about our careers by telling them what we are. We don’t say, “I practice law”—we say, “I am a lawyer.” This is probably an unhealthy way to think about careers, but the way many societies are right now, a person’s career quadruples as the person’s primary identity. Which is kind of a big thing. So yeah—your career path isn’t like my unfashionable sweatshirt. It’s really really deeply important, putting it squarely in “Definitely absolutely make sure to give it the time it needs” territory. You’re not a pro at this, but you’re certainly more qualified to figure out what’s best for you than our collective un-self-aware great uncle. For those of you yet to start your career who aren’t sure what you want to do with their lives, or those of you currently focusing on a career path who aren’t sure you’re on the right path, I hope this project can help you press the reset button on your thought process and get some clarity.

Business, Finance

Adrien

Optimization and Issues within the Current International Supply Chains

COVID-19 has severely damaged the international supply chains, causing issues all across the world. An analysis of how the pandemic has specifically caused disruption within these distribution channels and what can possibly be done in order to ameliorate these issues.

Engineering, Finance

Abhishek

Investment research paper

My mentee will pick 1-2 companies and will do research on them, similar to how a professional investor does their own due diligence reports. The goal of the project will be for the mentee to learn how they should think about a company from an investment perspective. A company can be cool and seem popular, but will it actually make you money? The student will weigh the risks/benefits, and then determine whether or not they think the company would be a good investment. This project will provide valuable practice for students who will undoubtably use these skills in the future.

Finance

Jason

What college should I attend?

This example project uses data science to make an informed decision about what college a student should attend. The first step involves gathering data from various sources, aggregating and cleaning the data in Python, R, or MATLAB, and finally using various data science methods to arrive at a decision.

Business, Finance

Jolene

Investment Strategies for Financial Freedom or FIRE

A hands on project that will allow the student to understand and deep dive into the fundamentals of capital markets in the United States. The student will not only write a paper, but also create a strategic action plan that dictates the actions to take in order to maximize returns on capital. The following skills and concepts will be learned and applied: -Brokerage Accounts -Stock Picking -Mutual Funds and ETFs -Hedge Funds and PE Funds -Capital Gains and Taxes -Retirement Accounts and Tax Advantaged Accounts -Advanced Research (Fama French model vs. Cap M) -Income budgeting

Finance, Organizational Leadership

David

Building psychological safety in organizations

This project looks at how psychological safety can be built through intentional management choices. The goal is to understand the effect that leading through culture has on individuals, and the tools that are available to leaders and managers in building a psychologically safe organization.

Finance

Chris

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

Enerik

Understanding Financials of a Business

I have a strong background in finance, advising and investing in growing companies in many different industries. I would love to help create and guide a student through a project with the goals of: (a) understanding how to read the financials of a business and (b) creating their own financial statements for a real or fictional business.

Finance

Ali

Research Project on Youth Vaping Epidemic

I researched data related to a Public Heath crisis of the youth vaping epidemic. This was a 25 page research project in which I received an A. I also had to make a ppt and present my findings to a group. I would love the opportunity to present my entire paper and project.

Philosophy, Ethics, Psychology, Public Health, Finance, Organizational Leadership

Candice

Create a Blog or Podcast Series on a Market/Industry

Do you have a particular market or industry that you'd like to learn more about? I spent three years researching market trends and competitive landscapes as an investor, and I would love to help a student create a blog or podcast series diving into a specific market and some of the interesting businesses operating within that industry.

Finance

Ali

Gender Economic Inequality

Women tend to be the workforce majority in many service industries including healthcare, social work, hospitality and retail. For these reasons, women’s livelihoods have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Potential research ideas include: How has female employment status been impacted by the pandemic? What are implications of female unemployment on the college degree, attendance and completion of women? How has the gig economy influenced women’s work opportunities?

Economics, Finance

Kristen

Training Program for a Professional Athlete

In this project you will create a yearlong training program starting from the off-season until the end of the competition season. Training will be looked at from a holistic perspective and include: • Strength & Conditioning – Prescribe aerobic and resistance exercises to improve the performance of an athlete • Nutrition – Create a nutrition plan that will enable athletes for elite performance with the intention to maximize energy production and recovery • Sports Psychology – Routine to help athletes perform under high pressure and overcome problems with focus and motivation • Therapy – Schedule sessions with physiotherapists, massage therapists, and prescribe self-directed recovery exercises • Exercise Testing – Evaluate the potential success or measure improvement of an athlete by conducting isolated physical tests related to the sport they play

Finance

Karen

Go To Market

Take an idea, be it a product or service, and build it into an actual business plan. Focus on creating value for your customer through your business and create a winning sales pitch to secure sales and/or funding.

Economics, Quantitative, Finance

Aaron

Analysis of the Effect of Interest Rate on Stock Prices A Case Study of Ghana Stock Exchange

This research used quantitative methodology and was performed using regression analyses to assess the relationship between interest rates and stock prices on the Ghana stock exchange. The ordinary least square regression was estimated with stock price as the dependent variable and interest rate as the independent variable. The variables were transformed into their natural logarithm forms

Economics, Social Science, Finance

Emmanuel

Mapping U.S. inequality

Household income varies dramatically between neighborhoods, cities, counties, and regions in the U.S. For this project, students will first use Census data and mapping libraries in R to visualize the spatial dimension of economic inequality. Then they can home in on whatever factors interest them most—such as differences in education or occupation—or examine several policy proposals intended to address this inequality. Students interested in political science might also want to study the relationship between local economic outcomes and voting patterns.

Economics, Finance, Statistics

Anthony