Introduction Whether you are doing the science fair to qualify for ISEF or want to conduct an independent research study, this list will walk you through the top 5 best research project ideas for high school students in STEM.

Note: We do not want you to just copy one of these ideas word of word, because they HAVE been seen in the past and will not be novel or unique enough on their own to make it far.

Rather, we want these ideas to serve as a set of guidelines for you to look back on and get ideas through for your own work.

Let's go!

Top 5 Best Science Research Project Ideas

1. Disease Study (Biology) Many top science fair projects are in the field of biology, typically in association with another scientific field, and it's no wonder why.

Biological study of the human body at a high school level has led to some revolutionary findings in the field of medicine, which ultimately helps save millions of lives in the long run.

So how exactly do you conduct a disease study?

The recommendation is, as with most of these science projects, that you seek out help.

Finding a research mentor would be instrumental towards giving you that extra boost, even if you are very familiar with your field.

The first thing that you want to do is figure out a problem to conduct research on.

Chances are, you aren't going to actually find a SOLUTION to certain real-world problems, but even tiny advances in the study go a long way at the science fair level if they are complicated and impressive for high schoolers to be involved with.

Next, once you have the issue you are passionate about resolving, you want to try to contact any local labs at universities or institutes nearby and politely inquire of them if you can use their facilities to conduct science research.

Make sure to explain precisely what your motive is, how your work will align with their philosophies, how they could benefit from your research, etc.

You will most likely have to email a multitude of different organizations before even one responds and agrees to help you out.

Then, you have to come up with a step-by-step set of procedures and deduce exactly what you want to gain from this experiment.

You should be trying to collect new and rare data that is complex and novel enough that it could genuinely make a positive impact on the world, but not so intricate that you find yourself unable to complete the project.

Finding such a fine balance is often the hardest part of this whole ordeal, even more so than the research itself.

Finally, you actually do the lab!

Collect your data, be precise with everything you take away, ask your mentor for help, book a consulting call to add the finishing polishes, and revel in your project!

If you can figure out a way to do something that nobody else has done before in the field of medicine or biology, then you WILL have a good shot at winning.

2. Energy/Money savers If biology or helping save millions of lives isn't your cup of tea, then there are other projects that can have astounding real-world implications for you to pursue.

Be it that your strengths are more grounded in mathematics, topics around saving energy and thus millions if not billions if not trillions of dollars may just be the right approach.

So what do I mean by "energy savers"?

Well, renewable energy can come in many different forms, from thermal energy to wind energy to hydropower to chemical energy, and will almost always be a cleaner and greener alternative to greenhouse gases.

Especially with global warming taking the world by storm, a project around harnessing energy in a more cost-effective and environmentally sound way is more relevant than ever.

How do you begin the actual project though?

Well, similar to the last project, you first want to try to seek out a mentor or a partner to help you along the way and ease the difficulty of the whole study.

Then, you want to do as much research as you possible can through literature reviews in order to grasp a nuanced level of knowledge and understanding on the field and identify potential holes in current energy models.

This literature review stage may take weeks if not months, and should be scheduled far in advance from when you want to actually being working on the project.

Once you are comfortable with some of the terminology of energy and have immersed yourself within a specific type of energy field that you want to focus on optimizing, analyze current energy models and try to identify some problems in them.

Focus on money, feasibility, and eco-friendly scale.

Then, begin to settle on one specific problem that you believe is most pertinent and brainstorm some possible solutions to it.

Now, for the actual experiment.

Similar to with the disease experiments, you want to try to contact a lab or energy saving specialist in order to try to work hand-in-hand.

The goal is to create a prototype or digital model of something that you believe would combat the current leading design in the industry while still maintaining its pros.

Then, compare the two models, the current one and your newly designed one, making sure to restrict as many control variables as you can.

Identify your system and surroundings, and analyze the trends based on a lab study with an independent and dependent variable as well.

Finally, once you have all of your data, make a data table modeling your finding and ensure that you lucidly explain why this experiment is worth scientist's time and how it is both complicated and beneficial in serving society immensely.

This goes for all of the categories on this list

- you NEED to explain in layman's terms exactly why this project is so tremendously creative and innovative that it can help benefit the real world like never before.

Otherwise, the judges won't be impressed, and the research paper won't sell.

3. Space Exploration This can be one of the most complex projects out there, which is great. if done right.

Space exploration typically has a lot to do with highly advanced mathematics topics coupled with physics.

It's the type of stuff that goes over most people's heads, and thus the pot of gold for science enthusiasts.

But what does it entail?

Besides the commonalities mentioned for the past two lists, here are some new things to be on the look out for when conducting this project: Contacting a NASA Engineer

- If you are trying to build something or create blueprints for a new type of space shuttle, you most likely need the help of someone at NASA or another reputed space exploration company Models

- Whether you are talking about how to colonize Mars or a new type of space rover to traverse the moon, such projects would be difficult to visualize without a model.

This could be a paper maché model hand crafted, or a digital one using Tinkercad or Adobe.

It could even be something that you actually created using engineering supplies!

Listing out the Math: Suggesting innovations of any kind to a space expert is something that can seem like a daunting task.

Nevertheless, you can never go wrong is you have the numbers to back you up, which is why for this project more than others it is crucial that you list out all of the complex math and physics that back up why your prototype would be the best.

In an independent research paper, this becomes even more important, but you are likely not constricted to a word or specified space (get it, like outer space?) limit like with competitions such as the science fair.

Overall, if you are interested in aerospace engineering or high level maths/physics in general, then projects that relate to space typically wow judges and are a great place to start.

4. Gizmos to Help Inconveniences Inconveniences are like the stepsons of diseases, and are much easier to create a quality, controlled project around while sacrificing some of the complexity.

Essentially, for this project you should just follow the exact same protocol that you did for the disease control one, but for specific minute problems that people face on their day to day lives rather than full blown diseases.

Often times, this category of science projects comes in accompaniment with an engineering type project where you create a gizmo based on data about the inconveniences that people face.

This gizmo should respond to the most critical issues of something and try to solve/fix them.

The project could also analyze present solutions in an experiment and note the pros and cons of each, subsequently suggesting a hybrid solution or leading on to a completely new one that is novel and addresses all concerns (which is the part that takes a bulk of the time).

Still confused?

See the table below for some ideas of major/minor inconveniences that people face on a day to day basis that you could model a solution after in a science research project: ProblemWhat you do:Many people with arthritis in their finger joints struggle with gripping water bottles.

Conduct a research study on arthritis and water bottles and construct a better handle.

People in your community want to figure out the best way to get to work.

Conduct a survey collecting data from each member on their health goals, costs, and convenience desires, glean the data using code, and explain using world-wide research studies and literature reviews how people all over the world can optimize their schedules.

People with dementia have trouble identifying certain things.

Design a gizmo that translates using a text-to-speech operating system exactly what is present in the world around you.

Many stub their toes while exiting out of their door.

Design a door stub remover.

Students struggle with fitting all of their school supplies in their backpacks.

Conduct a research study on different types of backpack storage spaces and design a new backpack that can fit everything.

People don't know what type of material to build their [insert something here] out of.

Conduct a research experiment in which you target certain metals/materials and chemically perform experiments on many different types of properties of that material before identifying which one would be ideal.

Garden sprinklers waste a lot of water even if they are optimally spread out.

Design a system to identify exactly how much water certain patches of grass desire in a given moment and hook it up to a sprinkler system to calculate.

Bad Wifi Connection/The Digital DivideConduct a research experiment on current areas and targeted groups who are victims of the Digital Divide and propose a system based on your studies of current solutions to optimize internet distribution.

5. Using AI Ahh yes, the infamous AI that everybody seems to have such strong opinions towards.

Whether you love if or you hate it, you have to admit that AI can be a tool which, if wielded properly, can help the world in so many different ways.

As an added bonus, as soon as you program the AI model to do something specific, like a facial recognition app (which would have definitely won the science fair 10 years ago), you can just watch it run and impress both any judges and your family/friends around you!

You can also make a lot of money off it, especially if what you've programmed the AI model to do can make a positive impact on the world.

Below are some top project ideas recommended and used in the past with AI:

1. AI-Generated Text Recognition Project Idea: Investigate whether volunteers can correctly identify AI-generated text versus human-written text.

You can create a dataset with both AI-generated paragraphs and human-written paragraphs.

Then, ask participants to determine which category each text belongs to.

This project explores the challenges of distinguishing between AI and human writing, which has implications for news articles, essays, and more

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2. Happy or Sad?

Using AI to Classify Faces Project Idea: Train an AI model to classify facial expressions as happy or sad.

You don’t need coding skills for this experiment.

Use a web-based tool to collect images of faces displaying different emotions.

Label them as happy or sad, and then train the AI to recognize these patterns.

This project demonstrates how AI can learn from data without explicit programming

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3. Unbeatable Tic-Tac-Toe AI Player Project Idea: Explore the Minimax algorithm, which makes decisions in two-player games like tic-tac-toe.

You don’t need advanced coding skills for this project.

Investigate how the algorithm ensures optimal moves for the AI player.

Can you create an unbeatable tic-tac-toe AI opponent?

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4. AI in Medical Diagnosis: Can It Detect Breast Cancer?

Project Idea: Dive into the intersection of AI and medicine.

Explore whether AI algorithms can diagnose breast cancer from medical images (such as mammograms).

Gather a dataset of labeled images and train an AI model to identify cancerous patterns.

Discuss the potential impact of AI in healthcare

1. Ultimately, you have to be careful with how you use AI.

It can be both a blessing and a curse, and you must explicitly state both HOW you used it in your project how your use OF it was necessary in order to create something that you believe will do more good in the world than bad.

Want Extra Help with YOUR High School STEM Research Project?

Purchase the science fair masterclass below created by a Harvard Undergraduate who won the International Science and Engineering Fair himself: https://www. rishabacademy. com/stem.

Best of luck with your project!.