core-program

pods

pathfinders

programs

about-us

program

team

careers

projects

mentors

project-ideas

blog

mentor-faq

scholars

reviews

symposium

research-archive

research-opportunities-for-high-school-students

Our next winter deadline is December 15, 2023 11:59pm PT. Apply today to lock in your spot!

10-session deep dive into a research topic of your choice

6-week research project with an expert and peers who share your passion

A career discovery experience with 3 expert mentors in your chosen fields

research-ideas-for-high-school-students

research-opportunity-guides

showcasing-opportunities

student-faq

for-mentors

for-educators

for-parents

resources

about

outcomes

We are going to explore breast cancer development and metastasis and look into the mechanism of action via tumor suppressors. Ideally, we will research p53 (a tumor suppressor/others) and see how that influences ROS production. ROS is influential in tumorigenesis and leads to microenvironment that facilitates favorable factors for cancer. Our research will explore how this suppression leads to ROS production and if this in turn influences migration of cancer cells. We will explore if ROS is a direct influence on the migration or just a byproduct of tumor suppressor mutations and how that plays in leading to the migration of cancer to other tissues. 

Biotechnology, Healthcare, Biology, Business of Science, Biomedicine

Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) effect on development and migration of breast cancer cells

Schizophrenia can be a debilitating condition that affects the daily life of a patient and their loved ones.  There have been some genetic trends associated with schizophrenia, but it is unclear if there are particular gene mutations that can run in families leading to hereditary schizophrenia.  Gene mutations in genes like GRIN2A have been associated with familial schizophrenia; further research of this gene and others would important to understanding the characteristics of familial schizophrenia.

Chemical Biology, Drug Development, Biological Experimental Assay Development

Specific Genes in Schizophrenia- GRIN2A

Manipulating DNA using CRISPR-Cas is often thought of as a futuristic idea. While it is true that some aspects of the technology are idealistic and problem inducing, many applications of CRISPR have been proven plausible in a number of cases in clinical settings. Treatments for monogenic autism could be next. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is related to other conditions; such as Fragile X Disorder and Rett Syndrome. Studies to examine the link between these medical conditions and combat their affects are well underway. \nThe challenges that face the scientific community when working with new, groundbreaking technology is unparalleled. However, there is much motivation to conquer these complications. \nThis review paper will ultimately focus on the state of the field as it is at present, along with realistic goals the biologists have set for the future. The paper will uncover the bioethics that surround altering the human genome without individual choice. The controversies at the center of CRISPR-Cas technology is paired with the discussion of the main difference between, what society deems "neurotypical" versus what is known to be "neurodiverse." Scientists at universities such as Harvard, MIT, and the University of Toronto are evolving the state of CRISPR-Cas delivery. Options such as AVV delivery are widely used and topics like in vivo and ex vivo methods are heavily researched in different medical settings. This paper will take a critical look at the current research and the new strategies regarding CRISPR delivery, prime editing, consequences of utilization, such as Off Target Effects (OTEs).

Protein/Enzyme Design and Engineering, Genetics, Microbiology, Biochemistry, Molecular Dynamics, Parkinson's Disease, Chemistry, Phage Evolution

Manipulating DNA using CRISPR-Cas to lessen autismic symptoms in juvenile patients.

I have always been passionate about orthopedics and have hoped to help create an alternative for a medical issue; with that,  I have created a project that is centered around creating and producing commercially 3D-printed insoles for children with Cerebral Palsy. 8,000 newborns are diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy every year, and with their continued growth into adulthood, they will need to be able to obtain insoles in order to function at their best ability. The true issue is that some families are unable to pay for these insoles because of how expensive they are and because it takes months to produce them. With children constantly growing, by the time the insoles are shipped, they may no longer fit the patient. With my new solution, patients will be able to buy 3D-printed adjustable custom insoles, allowing patients to receive the insoles faster and cheaper while also allowing for extended wear. I will focus on printing these insoles using Hersco Labs to begin the 3D printing process. The 3D printing process should take approximately 1 week to create, which is extremely quicker than the current insole creation time. I will then work to distribute these insoles through the Cerebral Palsy Foundation in New York City.

3D bioprinting, biophysics, tissue engineering,

Design and Distribution of Customizable Insoles for Cerebral Palsy Patients

Joseph is building a Duolingo-esque learning app that will instruct other students on the fundamentals of the Java programming language. Joseph learned Java through an AP Computer Science A curriculum and is looking to share what he learned with other high school students like himself. In this app, a student will see a course curriculum and progress through the Java "journey" by completing content and exercises. There will also be checkpoints and mini-quizzes to test learning and understanding before allowing progression to the next module. Joseph will be building this app through React Native, JavaScript, and potentially using a Java backend.

Computer Science, Frontend Engineering, Product Management

Duolingo App for Java

Lani will be examining the relationship between COVID-19 and mental health outcomes among adolescents. She will conduct her own original research using an online survey to better understand how social media usage during the pandemic is associated with mental health. 

mental health, psychology (eating behavior, health behaviors, stress, weight stigma, weight issues, body image, social connection, social relationships, mind-body connection)

COVID-19 consequences on adolescent social media use and mental health

The student is working on a research report on the REIT industry. He is interested in discussing how to analyze a REIT investment and how the process works to create a REIT yourself. The student would like to put together a comprehensive report on the industry and comparing pros and cons to REIT investing, specifically residential REITS.

Financial Literacy, Economics, Excel Skills, Market Research

How to Analyze and Create REITS

Investigation of the associations between sleep and mental health among younger & older adults using a publicly available dataset.

effects of stress/poverty on development, early childhood education, infant brain development, preschool interventions, developmental psychology

Associations between Sleep and Mental Health in College Students & Adulthood

**In the United States, immigrants make up a large percentage of the community. Vietnamese-American immigrants make up a large part of these communities. Refugees and immigrants are prone to experiencing traumatic events, whether it be pre-migration or post-migration, yet trauma-based research on Vietnamese Americans specifically has been minimal. Thus, it is important to understand how the trauma they may have experienced affects them, and how these effects may trickle down into future generations, and so forth.**



In this paper, we researched and discussed the following questions: What are the long-term effects of traumatic experiences on the brain, primarily among Vietnamese American immigrants and refugees, and how do these traumatic experiences affect the following generations?



We found that though mental health issues are prominent in this community, mental health resources are underutilized. This is the result of cultural stigmas surrounding the idea of mental health, as well as a lack of understanding regarding mental health issues. It is therefore important to raise awareness in order to combat the stigma of mental health in this community. Though mental health issues are prominent within this community, Vietnamese Americans are often reluctant to discuss their issues and seek help. As a result, many do not get the help they need, and mental health issues continue to arise within this ethnic group. The stress this places on familial and societal relationships among this community goes on to affect those who did not face any traumatic event as well. This further allows the cycle of intergenerational trauma to continue, affecting future generations.

Clinical Psychology, Psychology, Neuropsychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroscience, Neuropsychological Assessment, Neuroimaging, Dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, Primary Progressive Aphasia, Traumatic Brain Injury, Epilepsy

Effects of Mental Health Among Vietnamese Americans

cancer biology, immunology, bioengineering, synthetic biology, virology

Problem: 
Allergy diagnostics today are extremely invasive and sometimes inaccurate. Children are especially affected as they are sensitive and not always able to deal with the side effects of diagnostic tests. False positives and negatives are prevalent, which means that the process of an allergy diagnostic is not even worth it sometimes. 

Question: 
What is the current best diagnostic and what is a diagnostic that can be used clinically in the near future in pediatric patients?

Methods: 
In this research paper, I will be providing a curated review of literature that addresses this question. The articles will be sourced from PubMed. There will be a special focus on the utility of each test for pediatric patients. The paper will compare past diagnostics, as well as review recent advances in diagnostics that are in proximity to clinical use in the near future. 

Prediction:
I expect that in the future, we will use diagnostics that are less invasive, more accurate, and better suited for children than today. 

Immunology, Cancer Immunology, Cancer Immunotherapy, Drug development, scientific writing, creative multi-media, creative writing

Advances and opportunities in allergy diagnostics for pediatrics

Cystic fibrosis patients often develop lung infections because of the presence of thick and sticky mucus that fills their airways. The presence of this thick mucus prevents the lungs from filtering out certain dominant bacterial types, making patients highly susceptible to infections that can range anywhere in severity from mild to life-threatening. These infections can cause great distress for patients as it becomes harder for patients to breathe and increases the chance of mortality by respiratory failure. It is important to be able to track the progression or regression of cystic fibrosis to determine the best course of treatment. Thus, this project focuses on the use of an AI model to examine the microbiology of cystic fibrosis patients and predict the condition or stage of lung function in the future, as a way to guide doctors with their treatment plan.

Medical Imaging, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Image Processing

How can the lung microbiome be used to predict cystic fibrosis disease progression via FEV1 score?

Cystic fibrosis patients often develop lung infections because of the presence of thick and sticky mucus that fills their airways, and some of the most common bacteria that cause these infections are pseudomonas aeruginosa and staphylococcus aureus. These bacterial infections can range anywhere in severity from mild to life-threatening, making it harder for patients to breathe and increasing the chance of mortality from respiratory failure. Thus, I examined the microbiology of cystic fibrosis patients, to predict the current condition or stage of lung function, as a way to guide doctors when planning the courses of treatment.

Using a publicly available dataset of DNA sequences from bacteria in the lung microbiomes of patients with cystic fibrosis, we investigate the existence of positive or negative correlations between the different microbial species in the lung and the extent of deterioration of lung function. I hypothesize that less diversity in the lung microbiome will be indicative of worsened lung function for cystic fibrosis patients. Furthermore, this decrease in diversity will be accompanied by the dominance of a specific type of bacteria over time. The outcome of this project will consist of a research paper, detailing whether this hypothesis was supported using 16s sequencing methodologies.

Bioengineering, biomedical data science, genetics, computational biology, computer science, machine learning

How can lung microbiome composition, analyzed through 16s sequencing, be used to predict disease severity in a cystic fibrosis patient?

Second language learning research suggests that visual aids and illustrations have the potential to enhance proficiency and retention of vocabulary terms in a foreign language. This study builds off of this literature by studying the learning of Polish words using images versus no images, and goes further by studying the differences seen in virtual learning versus in-person learning. This quantitative study compares the effectiveness of four learning methods. High school students (N=20) study 10 vocabulary terms in Polish through: (1) in-person tutoring with flashcards with illustrations, (2) in-person tutoring with flashcards without illustrations, (3) virtual tutoring with flashcards with illustrations, and (4) virtual tutoring with flashcards without illustrations. After a 15-minute tutoring session, participants will be asked to fill out a Google form that measures their vocabulary retainment. They will be asked to fill out the same Google form weekly for the following 3 weeks. 

Education, Public Policy, Racial Inequality

Vocabulary Retention of New Polish Words 

Eating disorders are a significant public health concern. Galmiche and colleagues conducted a systematic review with 94 studies from the years 2000 to 2018 on the global prevalence of eating disorders (page number). Based on their systematic review, the weighted mean of lifetime prevalence of eating disorders was 8.4% (range 3.3-18.6%) for women and 2.2% (range 0.8-6.5%) for men. Further, 75% of first-onset cases emerge during adolescence. An empirically supported risk factor for eating disorders is parent-child interactions and family environment (Jacobi, Hütter, Fittig). This is a narrative review on how parental behaviors impact the development of adolescent or young adult eating disorders. A literature search was conducted using the Google Scholar and Research Rabbit databases. Eating disorders are impacted by family dynamics such as attachment and parenting styles, and modeling of food and weight-related behaviors.

mental health, suicide prevention, trauma, psychological interventions, program development, prevention, violence prevention, clinical psychology, counseling psychology

The Impact of Family Dynamics on Adolescent Eating Disorders

Blood Spatters are one of the most common forms of forensic evidence in crime scene investigation. However, analyzing and classifying blood spatters takes a lot of time and energy, slowing down the investigation process. In particular, classifying the cause of impact stains as gunshot or blunt force could be sped up through the use of Artificial Intelligence. To tackle this problem, we used a publicly available dataset of 61 impact stain images and built a Random Forest Model that classifies the data as either gunshot or blunt force induced.

computer science, machine learning, applied mathematics, data science, data analysis, modeling

Applying Random Forests to the Classification of Forensic Evidence.

This Pod will have a one week break in sessions and will not hold a session on September 20th. The program will instead conclude on September 27th.

The idea of gene editing might sound like something out of a science fiction movie… how would you even start to think about changing the DNA that gives the trillions of cells in your body instructions on how to function properly? In this pod, you’ll dive into the world of genetics and gene editing and explore the potential for gene editing use in human health and disease applications. Through this process, you’ll learn about conducting research, the cutting-edge technologies allowing for gene editing, and the ethics of manipulating the human genome.

Genetics, genome editing, molecular biology, neuroscience, bioethics, science policy, genetics in human health/medicine

Explore gene editing: Learn about genetics and its uses in healthcare

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a method that extracts T cells from the patient's blood and virally introduces a genetically engineered T cell receptor targeting a specific cancer antigen and subsequently readministering these genetically engineered CAR T cells to the patient. These T cells are then better at identifying the tumors and attaching to these tumor cells resulting in a stronger cytotoxic immune response. The development of CAR T cells has been a huge success as an immunotherapy, especially for the targeting of non-solid tumors. Since their original inception in 1987, there are now six independent FDA approved CAR T cell therapies targeting a variety of blood cancers, with the first being approved in 2017. As a relatively new treatment, there is a continuous effort in improving the safety and efficacy of CAR T cell therapies. As mentioned previously, CAR T cells have undoubtedly been successful in the treatment of non-solid tumors, however their efficacy towards treatment of solid tumors has been limited. Additionally, the safety and long-term effects of CAR T cell treatments is still a concern. Combination therapy utilizing CAR-T cells and immune checkpoint inhibitors is being explored to potentially mitigate some of the limitations associated with CAR-T cells. These immune checkpoint inhibitors block the effects of the immunosuppressive microenvironment, so when combined with the CAR-T cell therapy, it would increase the success rate of the treatment. Because of this, the immune checkpoint inhibitors prevents the CAR T cells from becoming exhausted, thereby increasing the success rate of the treatment, proving the feasibility and positive impacts of a combination therapy between immune checkpoint inhibitors and CAR-T cell therapy.

Cell biology, pharmacology, cell migration, GPCR signaling and function

Combining CAR T-cell and immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy, a promising, yet unproven immuno-oncology approach

This project aims to create an online dashboard that visually presents information about a dataset containing over five thousand unique titles on Netflix. The end product will contain several graphs showcasing the correlation between specific columns of data. I plan on using Dash as the method of creating a dashboard and using the Python Language. The dataset being used was taken from the Kaggle website. The dataset contains 5850 rows and 15 columns. Each row is an entry for a title on Netflix and each column is a certain quality about it like whether it is a show or a movie, the name, the description, the year it was released, age rating(r, pg-13, tv-ma), the entire length in minutes, the genres that the movie or show satisfies, the country in which it was produced, the number of seasons there are if it is a show, several IMDB statistics and ratings, and the same for TMDB. There is also a secondary dataset that contains 54314 different people’s names each shown multiple times to amass more than 77 thousand rows and five columns. These columns include the actor’s name, the name of the character they played, and whether they were a director or actor. If they were the director, then they did not have a value in the column containing the names of the characters. I don’t plan on using this second dataset, instead focusing on the first one. I also plan to have multiple graphs with callback interactions and link different graphs together.

Any topic in data science (machine learning, applied math, statistics), web development, or chemistry.

Creating a Data Visualization Dashboard to visualize interesting trends in a dataset containing titles from the library of Netflix’s content.

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in America. Every day, about 125 Americans take their own lives. These deaths can be executed through both violent (e.g. firearms, hangings) and non-violent methods (e.g., overdosing). Prior work has found that the use of firearms contributed to around 60% of all completed suicides. Nearly 50% of suicidal attempts are done impulsively, with little planning. Access to firearms can often be dangerous in these situations, given that individuals in close proximity to a firearm are able to act on these impulses. Suicide by a firearm can be deadly, as 90% of firearm suicide attempts lead to death. This being said, individuals often turn to firearms when considering different methods of suicide. Owning a gun inside a home, increases the risk of suicide. The risk of suicide in homes with firearms increases for not only the gun owner, but also anyone living within the home. The present paper discusses access to firearms and the risks of suicide across all ages and genders.

projects that examine emotion regulation from a mental health perspective

What are the risks of owning firearms on suicide?

In the medical world, a multitude of revolutionary technologies have been developed to improve the process of diagnosing and treating a patient. In the modern era, one of the most innovative developments is the use of CRISPR-Cas9, an enzyme that uses palindromic sequences of nucleotides to bind to and delete or edit DNA. Although heavily studied as a genetic engineering tool, this fascinating protein can also identify genetic targets to improve cancer therapy through CRISPR screening. CRISPR screening is an experimental approach that can identify genes that are responsible for a specific phenotype. This paper

Meet Polygence Scholars and explore their projects