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.

People working on laptops
Math

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

Dante
Dante

Aerospace Attitude Control

To maintain stable flight, aerospace vehicles are equipped with an attitude control system that corrects disturbances interacting with the vehicle’s dynamics. Stability is achieved by applying the forces that are necessary to return to a nominal trajectory through the vehicle’s actuators. Aerospace actuators come in many different shapes and sizes, but the fundamental theory behind attitude control is universal to nearly all aerospace vehicles. In this project, we’ll design a rudimentary attitude control system by focusing on the vehicle’s roll dynamics only. Your task is to architect a feedback control system to maintain level ‘flight’ about a quadrotor’s roll axis. We’ll begin by reviewing the equations of motion for a simple quadrotor model. Next, we’ll investigate and implement an industry-standard control method known as PID control. While using MATLAB to simulate and control the vehicle, we’ll discuss real-world hardware such as inertial measurement units (IMUs) and brushless (BLDC) motor controllers. Time-permitting, students will have the opportunity to investigate a new and exciting application of data-driven control (sometimes referred to as machine-learning control) through their quadrotor model. To learn more about the project and the fundamentals of control theory, please visit https://natesosikowicz.wixsite.com/curriculumvitae/control-systems

Physics, Engineering, Math

Nate
Nate

Intro to Coding for Analytics

Want to learn how to use coding skills to spot patterns in data? This project would be best for someone who already has some exposure to programming, but even if you're brand new, we can dive in and build that foundation together! This project could take the form of a coding "notebook" or a written article summarizing findings and learnings.

Social, Psychology, Math, Statistics

Eleanor
Eleanor

Short Stories

We will work together to develop one or more short stories from an inkling or idea to a complete draft. We'll study and discuss the elements of craft relevant to fiction and read contemporary fiction and short stories in your genre to help you develop your writing.

Engineering, Literature, Math, Creative Writing

Vahid
Vahid

Are Medicare and Medicaid optimal for social welfare?

While many economists agree that some people in the society need the government's help to get better medical services, not all agree on the best method to do so. We can use data on Medicare and Medicaid spending and some measured outcomes to evaluate these policies.

Computer Science, Economics, Math

Majid
Majid

Network Modeling

In this project, students will learn about different types of neural networks and what problems motivated their creation from a historical perspective. Students will then select a network model to train to perform a task using a publicly available dataset. For example, students could train a convolutional neural network to categorize images in the CIFAR-10 dataset. Depending on familiarity with python, students will have the option of building their own model or using a publicly available one.

Biology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Math

Dante
Dante

Game Time!

Through Greenfoot, create a game with a topic and theme of your choice that conveys a story that can be used to educate others. Some previous coding experience is preferred but it does not to have to be with Greenfoot specifically. We will be able to publish the game on Greenfoot upon project completion.

Computer Science, Math, Public Health, Statistics

Shae
Shae

How does the size of an ecological community affect its long-term behavior?

Mathematical models have had an enormous impact in understanding ecology. Recent work (de Pirey & Bunin, 2024) showed that a well-known model of ecological systems known as the Lotka-Volterra model (or sometimes as the resource-competition model) can give rise to surprising behavior. For very large systems with randomly chosen parameters, populations can either be stable or chaotically fluctuating, depending on the value of one parameter (the migration rate into the community). In this project, you will explore how these results depend on the size of the ecological community. As you change the number of members in a community, what are the effects on coexistence vs. extinction? And for communities that coexist, how does the nature of that coexistence change with the community size? In this project, you will write code (preferably in Python or MatLab) to simulate an ecological system as a set of differential equations. You will use this code to generate data that you will then analyze. If you'd like, there will also be opportunities to address these differential equations analytically. The preferred outcome of this project will be a scientific research paper.

Biology, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science, Math

Ofer
Ofer

Can you always verify whether a Geometric Mean of a finite collection of numbers equals to one of them?

Constructive Real Numbers CRNs were introduced by the founder of Computer Science Alan Turing. Essentially a CRN is a computer generated sequence of rational numbers about which you know how fast it converges. Constructive Mathematics was developed in two schools founded by Bishop in the USA and by Markov and Shanin in Russia. You are give a finite set of numbers. The easy part of the project is to show that when the numbers are rational it is easy to create an algorithm that verifies if the geometric mean of these numbers equals to one of them. The challenging part is to show that such an algorithm does not exist in general when the numbers are CRNs.

Economics, Quantitative, Math

Vladimir
Vladimir

Who moves where? Exploring US Census migration data

Workers vary along many different dimensions: age, sex, income, education, household size, and so on. So, too, do places: New York City has very different employment opportunities and cost of living than those in Detriot or Phoenix or Billings. In this project you'll flex your data analysis and visualization skills to document facts about migration patterns in the US: Where are young college graduates most likely to move? What about married couples with kids? Retirees? Houston's population has been growing rapidly --- what sorts of workers have been moving there? What sorts of workers are leaving Detroit? There's lots of interesting work in economics exploring the determinants and consequences of life-cycle migration decisions, but the first step is to understand what's already there in the data. You can help us do that!

Economics, Math, Statistics

Levi
Levi

Design and Testing of 3D-Printed Propeller

Additive manufacturing has come a long way, specifically in the hobbyist market. Is it possible to manufacture an aircraft propellor? in this project we will explore the aerodynamics behind propellor forces and use them to design a 3d-printed propellor. Next, experiments will be performed to determine how useful this prototype can be.

Physics, Computer Science, Math

George
George

Writing a scientific review

Not ray for actual laboratory, or mathematical-computational research just yet? In this project, you will write a scientific review-style paper on a topic of your choice. Topics could range anywhere within STEM, from “how do computers work?” to “how do we know quantum mechanics is real?”. 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.

Physics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Math

Amy
Amy

ND Tic-tac-toe: questions in positional game theory

Positional game theory deals with games such as tic-tac-toe and connect four where the goal is to connect points in space, taking turns with your opponent. While our standard 2D tic-tac-toe has been 'solved', a lot of questions remain about the solvability and statistics of tic-tac-toe in higher dimensions, and with the variants on the game that come with these dimensions. We will explore some of these questions together, and try to figure out winning strategies for weird and wacky multidimensional games!

Looking inside the black box: why machine learning works

When we read about machine learning in media, it's often presented as a black box; that is, data goes in, the computer does some magic, and out comes a recommendation for which socks you will find most comfortable. While it is true that machine learning algorithms must be complex to solve complex problems, with a little bit of work, we can develop a remarkably deep understanding for why certain models behave as they do. Together, my student and I can pick a problem that we think machine learning might be able to offer a solution to. We can explore a variety of methods, experiment with them to see which may offer the best results, and dive into some theory to understand why we are seeing the results that we observe. At the end of our time together I hope that my student will have developed some experience with programming, will have learned some mathematics that they likely won't encounter again until they reach university and will be able to explain the core idea behind several machine learning methods. I would like to conclude our time together by authoring a technical piece of writing (or preparing a technical presentation) which encapsulates the work that we have done together.

Physics, Computer Science, Math, AI/ML

Mark
Mark

Analyzing Impacts to Structures

In this project researching methods of mitigating impacts to structures whether it is from structural systems or the design of the structure. (Preferred: any coding experience, Calculus, Physics.)

Computer Science, Math

Joaquin
Joaquin

The A is for Analytics -- An examination of the statistical metrics commonly used in the NBA

While the impact that the "analytics revolution" has had on the NBA over the last two decades is undeniable, the value of individual statistical metrics is not. In fact, the continued onslaught of new "advanced stats" has many fans questioning the value of such statistics altogether. After all, if I can argue any player's case by cherry-picking the right advanced stat, what good are such metrics in the first place? In this project, the student will read up on each and every metric commonly encountered in basketball discussions and GOAT debates, from the traditional box-score numbers to modern inventions such as Adjusted Plus-Minus. The goal of the project is for the student to understand all of those metrics and to critically examine their origins, gaining meaningful knowledge about both basketball and statistics while furthering their critical-thinking skills in the process. Depending on student preference, the project could result in a literature review, presentation or YouTube explainer video, among other things.

Physics, Sports Analytics, Math

Robert
Robert

Applying Privacy in AI

Privacy is normally a vague concept, but there are techniques to measure it in a rigorous way. Furthermore, there are ways of training AI models that preserve privacy - this is becoming an interesting area of research.

Math, AI/ML

Efthimios
Efthimios

Private Space vs Public Space: A Scientific and Economic Review

In this project, you will research the benefits and negatives of privately funded space companies or government funded. As there are many facets of the private and public space debate, the project can be an amalgamation of topics based on your interests. Topics to dive into can be, but are not limited to: Scientific advances completed by each sector, current engineering practices, current engineering advances, economic factors, political factors and more. The process of writing this review will be conducting a thorough literature search, learning to find a gap in the research, and critically analyze literature. You will gain skills in writing and editing, as well as an in-depth knowledge of your chosen research topic.

Physics, Engineering, Math

Yair
Yair

Replacing rare-earth elements in clean energy technologies

Achieving global climate goals requires rapid and widespread implementation of clean energy technologies. Yet, use of rare-earth elements in these technologies (e.g. cobalt in batteries, platinum in fuel cells, indium in solar panels etc.) make them cost-prohibitive and limit the possibility of extensive world-wide adoption of these clean energy alternatives. Potential project ideas include reviewing the fundamental functions of these rare-earth elements in energy technologies and investigating alternative, earth-abundant materials which may serve similar functions.

Physics, Chemistry, Math

Siddharth
Siddharth

Space Debris Problem

Have you ever wondered what happens to the remains of a rocket that goes into space? Or a satellite that is no longer in use? They remain in space as floating junk forming a layer around Earth. They even have a name, Spcae Debris. In this project, we will investigate the problem of space debris and its impact on spacecraft and satellite operations. Develop a project to analyze and classify the orbits of known debris objects using publicly available data from organizations like NASA. We will identify regions of space that need more attention and look at possible ways of reduce and eliminate space debris. We will learn to write computer programs that will help us visualize the debris floating in space.

Physics, Engineering, Math, Creative Writing

Madhusudan
Madhusudan