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

Personal Trainer, a la New York Times Seven Minute Workout

Develop an application to run through the NYT Seven Minute Workout. Expand the list of exercises, and add variability/randomness to the workouts, to yield a simple, virtual personal trainer.

Photography

Chris

Prototyping

In this project, you would choose a problem, gather user data, brainstorm solutions, and work on mock ups. Ultimately, you would gather feedback on your ideas and adjust them until we have a prototype. This would develop your engineering design process skills as well as analysis and synthesis of user feedback.

Biology, Arts, Photography, Chemistry, Math

Gillian

Photo Ethnography of Places

In this project you will be able to tell the story of a place in your own city or town --a museum, a zoo, a park, a cafe, a music store, a forest, a library, etc. Relying on the pictures you take of that place, you will be able to tell others why this location is important for your or your community and to begin to understand the many social forces that converge in this spot which, after all, make it a socially constructed and mediated terrain.

Literature, Photography, Creative Writing

Magdalena

Contribute to your favorite open source project

Contribute a feature or bug fix to your favorite open source project, such as: * Gimp (https://developer.gimp.org/core/submit-patch/) * Darktable (https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/wiki/Getting-started) * Organic Maps: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps#contributing * VLC (https://www.videolan.org/developers/) * OBS (https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.rst) * Signal (https://github.com/signalapp) There are a nearly endless supply of amazing open source projects, each with their own impressively long list of feature requests (and bug reports!). Contributing to any of these projects, in addition to being satisfying on a personal level, will make you a better engineer and give you skills that are highly sought after by employers (open source contributions look fantastic on a resume).

Photography

Chris

Synthesis Paper

In this project, you would choose 2-3 articles on a topic of your choice to study and compare. This paper would explain, compare, contrast, and offer your conclusion on the different approaches. You will develop your professional and scientific writing skills, research skills, as well as understanding and finding reliable sources. Topics could be anything from "Organic vs. Artificial heart valves" to "How the Grimm's Fairytales Changed Over Time".

Biology, Arts, Photography, Chemistry, Math

Gillian

Use a public dataset to test a theory and learn how to analyze social data

Using publicly available datasets like the GSS (General Social Survey), we can learn how to manage, clean, and prepare data for analysis. Once we formulate a research question and theory of interest (e.g., how have relationships and social support changed since before and after the pandemic?), we will use these datasets to analyze and interpret the results. Once complete, students will have an understanding of how to use applied statistical method(s) to test a research question and theory relevant to their interests.

Photography, Statistics

Gabriel

Documentary Film or Performance

Equipping and providing creative tools to that could guide a documentary process of filmmaking or performance making. The way one approaches a documentary project always influences and determines what is being documented, so understanding what type of approach work best in certain situations, while maintaining ethics, is key to a successful documentary project.

Dance, Photography, Creative Writing

Sami

Photo-Based Fiction

Have you ever found a snapshot that really captured your imagination? Maybe you've seen loose photographs at an antique store, or discovered charming photos of your relatives from when they were younger. Together, we'll allow these photographs to open up researchable historical questions. You'll combine this research with your imagination and creative writing skills to craft fictional narratives around these photographs.

Photography

Anna

Simulation Projects with Robotics

Simulation technology has drastically changed our ability to work with technical systems that aren't physically in front of us. Namely, robotics simulation technology has become increasingly advanced. We will leverage tools from major companies like Google and Amazon to tackle questions in robotics all in simulation!

Biology, Philosophy, Engineering, Computer Science, Photography

Henry

Narrating a Life

Is there anybody in your family, your neighborhood, your church or your school whose life or work inspires you? Based on digital ethnographic methods and with the aim to write a testimonial, in this project you will be able to delve into the lives of people from your community that spark your interest. While Covid-19 is still out there, technology offers plenty of resources to tell the stories of people whose lives are compelling to you.

Literature, Photography, Creative Writing

Magdalena

Molecular Toolbox

The creation of novel therapies and drugs in today's world leverages numerous technologies that span an array of disciplines including techniques in organic synthesis, protein engineering, biosynthetic chemistry, and cell engineering. We will select and review the literature on 1-2 methods from this vast sea of technologies and write a review article on the subject.

Cancer, Neuroscience, Engineering, Photography, Chemistry

Austin

Investigation on Acting Methodologies

Compare the acting methodologies of Stanislavski, Meisner, and the Method technique. Learn the different tools and resources for each technique. Choose a monologue and research how you would prepare to deliver the monologue using each technique.

Photography

Alicia

Curating an Exhibition in VR

Curating an art exhibition requires a unique mixture of skills: research, writing, design, storytelling, and strong aesthetic sensibilities. It's essentially making an argument about politics and culture through images. In this project, students design an art exhibition from scratch using a virtual gallery space like artsteps. I'll work with you to define a research question, learn the principles behind curating, write a compelling catalogue essay about the show, and design a virtual space that you can explore in VR. You'll bring an issue that matters deeply to you and we'll work to assemble artworks, from Instagram to museum collections, that help to tell your story.

Photography

George Philip

Building a research study or review on the impacts of social media

We can read, synthesize, and report on the current research associated with digital media use, such as social media, and create hypotheses that you can test for your own research paper. This would include learning how to conduct a thorough literature review, find relevant publications, cite your sources, and compose concise and focused research questions. From these questions we can create a proposal for what method(s) might be used to explore and test these questions.

Photography, Statistics

Gabriel

Open Source Adventure Course

Make a game that teaches the player to program/teaches them various algorithms. For example, the player could use basic flow of control to solve puzzles/riddles, defeat enemies by implementing a sorting algorithm that works faster than theirs, or race through a world using an algorithm such as A* to plot their course.. Publish the game under and open source license so anyone can add puzzles, levels, worlds, etc.

Photography

Chris

Research into Performance Techniques

Help in writing a research paper and analysis on techniques and traditions used in acting, dance, performance, and film/video. The paper can be conceptual and/or theoretical, with possible case studies as examples.

Dance, Photography, Creative Writing

Sami

Computer Vision - Eye Contact

Train a computer to recognize eye contact - i.e. whether a person is looking directly into a camera. Use this to drive interaction with the computer (e.g. find "good" photos from a set of images, take a photo when eye contact is made, trigger a voice assistant, etc).

Photography

Chris

Caring in an Unsettling World

In recent years, the field of anthropology has produced a comprehensive body of work focused upon the issue of care. Evidence from various anthropological sites shows how care is a resource, relation, and a practice that touches upon the intimate and familial, as well as the economic and the political. Care is contextual and specific, a polysemic concept emerging from the connections between macroforces and microprocesses (Buch 2015). As a practice, it “connotes some kind of engagement” (Tronto 1993), one intended to be, above all, restorative and world-building. Yet, after years of facing a global pandemic that has exacerbated the social, political, environmental, and economic instability, one cannot help but ask how we are to care in a world that seems to be falling apart. What does care look like in a society pierced by precarity, illness, pervasive racism, environmental destruction, and faltering democracy? Can we care? How do we do it? You can write an essay that reflects on this topics and aims to answer to this question.

Literature, Photography, Creative Writing

Magdalena

Photography and the Sites of Civil Rights

Recording history is a complex process, but sometimes a single image captures the mood of an entire era. In this project, you'll explore flashpoints in Civil Rights photography, ranging from 1960s era images by James Karales and Gordon Parks to contemporary photographs of Black Lives Matter protests by Philip Montgomery and Alexis Hunley. Reading newspapers, literature, and laws from these periods will contextualize specific events and the shockwaves they sent through American society. Your capstone for this project would be an online exhibition built on an open source platform like ArcGIS Storymaps. You'll compose short historical and interpretive essays on significant photographs and how they help to change opinions about race in America.

Photography

George Philip

Produce Your Own Short Film

Write, direct, and film a short film. Revise your script to follow the Aristotelian story structure. Work with friends and peers to act in your film. Create a shot list and storyboard of the film. Go out and film it.

Photography

Alicia