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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

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Our project is a box with propellers on the bottom. A piece moves from front to back, compressing the trash onto a platform. The platform rises to open up space below for more carrying capacity. The robot can operate either autonomously or by remote control. [Project Name Here] is targeted for use in retention ponds and small lakes.

Biophysics, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Quantum Physics, General Physics, Physical computing

Floating robot that collects trash from small to medium bodies of water.

The abstract sums it up nicely: This project examines how and why people use Discord, a messaging application launched in 2015 that has gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite being initially designed to support online gaming, previous research suggests that Discord is generally user friendly and supportive of non-gaming communication, such as in student’s online learning activities. However, the extent to which individual attitudes and characteristics predict Discord use is still unknown. Hence, we will conduct a survey-based study to examine how user attitudes (e.g., about advertising) and traits (e.g., gaming experience, age, gender) relate to perceptions of Discord and other messaging platforms. This research will provide insights into the larger context of messaging application adoption, guided by the research questions and hypotheses below. 


Video Game Effects; Avatar Effects; Social Interactions in Virtual Reality; Educational/Health Gaming; Games and Gender; Gaming Toxicity; Gamification; Media Psychology; Human-Computer Interaction; Computer-Mediated Communication

Title: How and Why Do People use Discord as a General Messaging Application?

Alzheimer’s is a neurological disease that affects many spheres of life beyond its own onset. It has the ability to affect human biology in a way that affects many other disorders and diseases, and can be influenced by a number of external factors, including the environment, an individual’s lifestyle, sociocultural identity, and in relation to other diseases. Beyond the black and white science of Alzheimer’s that is traditionally studied, the political and economic impacts reflected by our government and public responses play a large role in how we tackle Alzheimer’s, and various social aspects of Alzheimer’s can affect the psychology of oneself, expanding to relationships and even has the potential to bring about discussions of cultural bias and impact in healthcare and caregiving.



Project outcome: Project outcome: a literature review on the impact of sociocultural identity, lifestyle, and non communicable diseases, as well as original research on the demographics primarily affected by Alzheimer's: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zkva6eKagVU1plH3KyXUHcSJAB9Gdbpvm4GVml5aTZc/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zkva6eKagVU1plH3KyXUHcSJAB9Gdbpvm4GVml5aTZc/edit?usp=sharing)

Bioethics, genetics, genomics, gene editing, evolution, population genetics

Beyond the neurology of alzheimers: the subtleties you can’t find in a lab

Our final project will build a new pet clothing brand on website and social media site with cohesive brand identity. For summary, during this project, we built the initial prototype of a new brand from scratch, leveraging consumer and market data, turning that data into insights that informed everything from the brand's name and look and feel to what I planned for marketing and revenue strategies.

I'll walk you through my approach from brainstorming to market research to turning insight into action, building brand identity step by step, and lastly building the NIU DREAM website and social media site. I'll also discuss how I picked up numerous marketing terms and strategies through hand-on experiences. Both a pitch deck and a webpage deck will be used to present the final project. Customer profile, logo and brand identity, brand and product promise, product samples, mission statement, and this brand's short and long term goals are all included in the pitch deck. The webpage deck displays a preview of the official website and social media site, as well as a blog post that aids in the development of customer relationships. The photos featured in the deck are only for learning purposes, and the deck also includes links to the original resources.

Our outcomes will be learn how to effectively communicate with customer, learning how to turn data into insights, learning the value of consumer insights and how to both find and leverage those insights to refine brand and marketing strategies, learning the value of short and long term goal setting, building a brand identity that is consistent across channels and grounded in consumer research, and getting experience presenting in a business context.

The final project shows our journey of building an online pet clothing brand and shows the brand identity through a website and social media site. Most importantly, the project will show the "why", the mission, and value behind NIU DREAM.

Brand marketing, digital marketing, project management, environmental sustainability

Building a Brand from the Beginning

In 2018, Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company, revealed “its fourth consecutive year of growth for its ‘sustainable living’ brands, which grew 46% faster than the rest of the business and delivered 70% of its turnover growth.”  “Sustainability” is defined as the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance. Sustainable living is a common topic on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, reeling in younger generations. As of 2021, 78% of Generation Z shoppers purchased an item advertised on social media. Additionally,  22% of Millennials in a survey conducted by Statista considered sustainability when purchasing products, followed by 18% of Generation Z. Through social media, brands are able to target younger audiences and capitalize on the appeal of buying sustainable products. However, many companies are not truthful about their sustainability or eco-friendly practices when advertising their lifestyle goods, like makeup and clothing. This practice is known as “greenwashing,” where companies misrepresent or exaggerate their eco-friendly practices and sustainability goals.  Greenwashing is extremely deceptive and can lead consumers to purchase products from companies that are scamming them. This leads the researcher to conduct a survey measuring how the consumer behavior of Generation Z and Millennials are affected by sustainability advertisements, whether truthful or not. This survey will also explore the extent to which these consumers are willing to buy sustainably and whether their stated beliefs are proven through their purchasing actions. The researcher hypothesizes that Millennial females with higher disposable incomes will be more likely to purchase products advertised because the Millennial generation has shown more concern statistically for sustainability, and with higher disposable incomes, they have the financial means to purchase sustainable products even if they are more expensive.

Behavioral Economics, Environmental Justice, Social Psychology

How does the usage of marketing sustainability via social media affect female Generation Z and Millennials’ tendency to purchase products?

Mental imagery is the internal experience of representing sensory information that is normally perceived through the senses, entirely in the mind. Visual mental imagery, which is the most commonly studied type of imagery, is commonly referred to as “visualization,” or “seeing through the mind’s eye.” One of the defining features of imagery is that it does not require an external stimulus for the creation of a mental image.  Imagery can also be either voluntary or involuntary. Involuntary mental imagery is important as it is the essential element of many psychological disorders. Mental imagery has general significance in our lives as it is often used as a tool for remembering information, and it is increasingly being used in clinical fields both to study and to help treat mental health disorders. The purpose of this paper is to review literature on the neuroscience of mental imagery, emotion, and its clinical applications. This paper will also discuss different forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and their effectiveness in treating anxiety and mental health disorders, specifically social phobia. Additionally, this paper will attempt to fill in the gap in previous studies by providing insight into which form of CBT may be most effective for treating social phobia.

Psychology, Neuroscience, Statistics, Music, Philosophy of Science

Mental Imagery and Social Phobia: What Form of Imagery-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is Most Effective?

My student doesn't officially know her topic yet. She has had some changes of interest thoughout our session. We decided to take one more session for her to brainstorm, write the topic, and write the abstract. It will have something to do with oppressed Native American peoples and their current fight of that oppression. We are hoping to provide solutions for either fossil fuel or climate change justice. 

Environmental Sciences (agriculture, plant biology, ecology, etc), Arts - dance or creative writing, Business Topics, and Sustainability of environmental, social, and economic topics. Solar energy development as well.

How has the Fossil Fuel industry historically Oppressed Native peoples? (in the great plains) and how are they fighting back?

How is the portrayal of women from roughly 2800 years ago, as seen in ancient greek mythological and historical writing, similar to the portrayal of these same women today? This project aims to answer this question by exploring how women are depicted in Greek mythology past and present. Through close textual and visual analysis of ancient and modern text and images of Greek myth, this project looks at the common thread for both time periods; the idea of gender roles, a social ideology which imposes a set of rules for each gender to follow. 

Perceptions of Greek women through common themes are apparent as precursors to modern gender roles, specifically the themes of the value of women in relation to their male peers, degree of cunning and manipulation, and agency in their own lives are evident in the earliest accounts of Greek Mythology. 

Modern retellings and translations have taken different approaches to either highlight, or create an absence of light on the subject, which impacts views of Greek mythology in a modern and ancient sense.

This paper will be translated into an educational audio-visual presentation to appeal to a wider audience in a more accessible format. 

My hope in this project is to create an educationally stimulating but enjoyable presentation for individuals who are also interested in Classical Studies and Greek Mythology, specifically people who are impacted by gender roles and feel inclined to learn more.

Archaeology; Classics; Ancient History; Greek Language and Mythology; Digital Humanities

The Myth of Gender Roles: Portrayals of Women in Greek Mythology

This project hopes to review research on second/foreign language acquisition in neurodivergent brains and understand how it may be different than neurotypical brains.

Cognitive Psychology; Psychology/Neuroscience of Language; Speech-Language Pathology; Communication Sciences & Disorders; Disability Studies; Social Psychology

Disability and Second Language Acquisition

Description: Abstract, introduction, gene environment (including twin studies), neurobiology, detection via behavior, early adolescence, comorbid disorders, biomarkers, detection via genetics, discussion, conclusion

* to be expanded on by next session

Autism spectrum disorders, brain organoids, stem cell biology, fetal and adolescent neurodevelopment, anxiety & depression, medical marijuana, STEM career exploration

Early Detection of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Through Behavior and Genetics

The brain is an adaptable organ system that changes during health and disease, as well as in response to environmental stimuli. The neurochemical basis of these changes occurs at the level of individual neurotransmitters, the principal units by which neurons communicate and convey valenced information. Different neurotransmitters have different functions, such as sleep, memory, emotions, hunger/thirst, social bonding, autonomic functions, and among other key behaviors. However, these functions are compromised in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In AD we know that specific neurotransmitter systems are dysregulated, such as serotonin, Norepinephrine, dopamine, and melatonin. Despite a bevy of pharmacological approaches to modulate these neurotransmitter systems, emerging evidence indicates the therapeutic value of environmental stimuli as a non-pharmacological approach to modulate neurotransmitter levels. Specifically, music therapy is an emerging therapeutic intervention that shows immense promise in modulating key neurotransmitters that are dysregulated during AD. The purpose of this review is to summarize key scientific and clinical findings in the space of neurotransmitter systems involved in AD and music therapy.

Neuroscience, Biology, Engineering, Genetics, Data Science

Neurochemical basis of AD and Music Therapy 

Mallory will draft, revise, and prepare for publication a children's book informed by her own life experiences.

Literature and Literary Theory, Philosophy, Creative Writing, Race and Ethnicity, Cultural Studies

Writing and Publishing a Children's Book: I'm Perfect

Cosette created a podcast entitled Vent2Vote to give upcoming voters the opportunity to find solace in hearing other upcoming voters vent about current events. In the podcast, she analyzes three key issues -equity, women's rights and climate change- from three perspectives: politics/government, media, and mental health. Cosette created her first episode with three other upcoming voters as an introduction to the podcast's goal: empower students, who cannot vote yet, through venting. Following the first episode, Cosette adopted a new format for the podcast. Each subsequent episode includes a short conversation with an upcoming voter. This serves as an introduction to a conversation with a professional from one of the three disciplines. During her ten Polygence sessions, Cosette held conversations with many upcoming voters, a school-based mental health advisor, and her local Councilwoman. Cosette plans to continue to record and edit episodes of Vent2Vote with the long-term goal of shaping a more educated generation of upcoming voters.

Clinical Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy, Academic Writing

Vent2Vote

Dealing with mental struggles all my life, I have always refused to take medication. I have witnessed people around me also deal with neurological differences and that is the reason I became more interested in neuroscience. To gain clarity on my own and the situations around me I decided to do more research, once I found the idea of neuroplasticity I was hooked. This paper will discuss neuroplasticity’s relationship with various disorders and their underlying physiologies, and encourage the idea of avoiding pharmaceuticals as the primary treatment option. The disorders examined in this study include alzheimers, schizophrenia, depression, dyslexia and ADHD. I believe that neuroplasticity is the future to a progressive remission within patients struggling with mental disorders. Instead of masking symptoms with medication we can learn to work through them and change the makeup of our brains. To form a new habit it takes an average of 66 days, or to “rewire” an area of your brain it takes between 18 and 254 days (Gardner et al., 2012). A large outcome of my research paper is that consistency is key and that it is the only way you will see long term results. Recognizing that combating a neurological issue and fighting a degenerative process can feel almost impossible to gather the motivation to work everyday and break your cognitive boundaries, I believe that there is effective change and it will get easier over time. Beginning that journey is your first step and there is never weakness with leaning on an alternate supporter, but alongside that I believe keeping neuroplastic enhancing habits is beneficial for anyone no matter their state of life. When I have the correct resources I plan to expand my research on this topic as widely as possible. 



Biology, Neuroscience, Epidemiology, Neuroepidemiology, Social and Behavioral Epidemiology, Developmental Psychology, Behavioral Psychology

Use It, or Lose It: Neuroplasticity in Neurodegenerative Disorders



We created a music recommendation system that takes in a single song for the basis of recommendation, and we explored whether our program could recommend similar songs with this limited information. In contrast, other music recommendation systems require more data to function, such as a user’s listening history or a playlist with multiple songs. We also implemented a feature into our music recommendation system that allows the user to specify the amount of similarity returned songs should have compared to the liked song. We assessed if this feature is able to function properly in our program. Our music recommendation system uses two machine learning algorithms: K-means clustering and Euclidean distance. Before applying the algorithms, we extracted data from Spotify playlists, scaled the data, and applied Principal Component Analysis (PCA). We created our own implementation of the K-means clustering algorithm and, in addition, used a software package to implement the algorithm. Our implementation of the K-means clustering algorithm returned well-defined clusters, similar to Scikit-learn’s implementation. After performing the K-means clustering algorithm, we sampled from the clusters using either random sampling or Euclidean distance. Our music recommendation program worked successfully and was able to recommend songs that were similar to a given liked song. Our program was also able to recommend songs with varying similarity to a given liked song as specified by the user. Between the two algorithms used, we found that the Euclidean distance algorithm was better suited for recommending very similar songs while the K-means clustering algorithm was better suited for exploring songs that were more different.

Mathematics, computer science, music theory, engineering, sustainability

Music Recommendation System

For my research paper I would like to investigate the relation between eating disorders and social anxiety disorder for adolescents Eating disorders cause issues such as body dysmorphia and the fear of being judged by the public and that further leads to developing anxiety in certain situations like eating in front of others. I will be speaking with a professional and asking questions about their experiences in working with kids with these disorders. To follow up on the interview, I will be reading multiple research papers to get an in depth understanding on the connection between eating disorders and social anxiety.

neuroscience, psychology, neuropsychology, neuroimaging

Eating Disorders and Social Anxiety in Adolescents

This research paper takes a look at the commonalities in brain structure and personality traits as they relate to criminal behavior. We look at numerous forms of physical trauma to the brain, emotional trauma and different behavioral characteristics that are widely observed among incarcerated individuals and how different events triggered this change in behavior. The primary focus was on combinations of brain abnormalities, such as tumors or blunt force trauma, that were most relevant to certain violent acts. We also discuss a few of the many controversies of incorporating neuroscience and psychology profiles to limit sentencing of individuals who exhibit criminal tendencies as well as the predictability of possible future criminal acts. Careful attention was given to how this research addresses real individuals. In order to not add stigma and perpetuate stereotypes to mental health conditions, specific characteristics are used rather than psychological disorders.

Cognitive neuroscience, psychology, biomedical engineering, electical & computer engineering, machine learning

Are there any shared characteristics in the structure of the brains of incarcerated individuals?

This study summarizes a few articles on how increasing the federal minimum wage impacts low income families and analyzes the effect of minimum wage increases on unemployment in Washington. Specifically, the study follows two different strands of research on minimum wage increases: how minimum wage affects prices in the market of goods and services and how minimum wage affects unemployment. In the analysis, I use contemporary price data and CPS data on unemployment to see what effect the minimum wage increases in the state of Washington have had on prices and unemployment using Oregon as a control state. This study finds evidence that increases in the minimum wage are correlated with rising prices and unemployment for low-wage workers. Increasing minimum wages may adversely impact low income families by creating a cycle of higher prices and subsequent minimum wage increases, as well as firms having to fire more employees due to the artificial price floor.

labor economics, public economics,

In what ways does an increase in federal minimum wage in the United States harm low-income workers?

The purpose of this research project is to analyze the social cognitive neuroscience of children raised during the COVID-19 pandemic through a primary research survey. The survey will be distributed to elementary teachers in the DFW area and will gather information regarding the behavioral changes of students through the last 2 years.

Previous research on this topic has shown that children are, in fact, detrimentally impacted by quarantining during the pandemic and experience problems such as “anxiety,
depression, irritability, mood swings, inattention and sleep disturbance”. However, most studies are categorized as systematic reviews, gathering and organizing data from existing articles rather than primary research. Other research papers focus more deeply on the psychosocial impact of COVID-19, but do not emphasize impacts on children. 
I hypothesize that elementary school children, particularly those in marginalized communities, have experienced psychosocial ill-effects due to their time without interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. These effects may manifest into signs of learning loss (including lower test scores and lower attention spans), and difficulties in cooperating with peers and teachers. The main purpose of focusing on the pandemic’s effects on children is to highlight the challenges that future generations may face on a social and scientific level. Children currently in elementary school (around ages 5-11) have had to experience their formative years
with fear of infection, lack of interaction, and more challenges.


Biomedical engineering, physiology, clinical and translational science, mitochondrial function, mental health, medical history, medicine, respiratory physiology, physiology, spinal cord injury

Meet Polygence Scholars and explore their projects