40 Great Research Ideas in Computer Science for High School Students

If you’re a high school student interested in computer science, chances are you’re looking to take this interest a step further. One way you can accomplish this is by pursuing a research project.

A research project will help you understand the inner workings of the topic you’d like to cover and contribute to ongoing research about the topic. It’ll also stand out on your college application in an original manner, displaying your intellectual curiosity and passion for computer science.

Spotting ideas can be a great catalyst for starting your research journey, and often, this is one of the harder parts. Don’t worry, we have you covered! We’ve shared some research ideas that should help inspire your research project, most of which are proposed by our Veritas AI mentors from universities such as Harvard, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Stanford, University of Oxford, and more.

Topic 1: Digital Ethics

With the rapid development of AI and ML models, ethics have become a significant area of study. Ethical principles and morality in computer science can relate to the development, use, and impact of computer systems. Data ethics involves analyzing the potential ethical implications of technologies and considering how they may affect the livelihoods of individuals, society, and the environment. In particular, they focus on issues such as privacy, security, accountability, and responsibility. If that sounds like something you would be interested in, consider the following topics: 

1. Perform a comparative case study on how data privacy laws differ between countries and infer how different social media profiles or web searches would differ based on these laws. This will require you to look into data collection, sharing, and user rights protection laws, and perform a comparative analysis. 

2. Research on how social dynamics play out in virtual worlds, and how to design social interfaces and interactions that would make the overall social experience more positive. You should try this project if you’re interested in data analysis, user interface design, and psychology, and would like to expand your knowledge of these topics. 

3. Conduct research on the potential of machine learning algorithms to perpetuate and amplify biases in data. You can look at the impact of this and how to control such biases. The research could make sure that the machine-learning models are fair and do not discriminate against certain groups of people. Probability theory, critical thinking, and knowledge about the current socio-political climate would be pivotal to conducting such research. 

4. Analyze the impact of AI-generated art and the ethical as well as copyright issues it brings up, and come up with a possible solution. This would require you to write a research paper by using your critical thinking skills as well as what datasets AI-art generators such as Midjourney use and how they use them to generate images. 

Topic 2: Artificial Intelligence Models

With large language models such as ChatGPT, Jasper.ai, and Bard taking the world by storm, knowledge and research of generative AI will continue to be important. However, these language models just scratch the surface. Artificial intelligence is a field within computer science that is focused on making systems that can learn and evolve, similar to how human brains do. We can apply AI methods to various fields such as medicine, analysis, biology, and psychology. Here are some research topics you can explore in these intersectionalities: 

5. Use computer vision to analyze public street scene data and extract fashion or any other trends. For fashion trends, you could track clothing styles, brands, and patterns worn by people on urban streets. This would help research in urban planning and marketing strategies. 

6. Create an AI chatbot to help catch warning signs of mental health issues in students. The chatbot could engage in conversations with the students and make sure that if they’re struggling with depression or emotional distress, they get the help that they deserve and require. This project would involve using NLP, data processing, and possibly speech recognition if you want to create a project that is multi-modal and much more accessible.

7. Create multi-modal systems that would combine a visual modality (e.g. keyboard, and mouse) with a voice modality (e.g. speech recognition for input). One version of this research could involve creating an AI chatbot that will let users ask questions about a TV series or a movie, with the system providing the user with accurate and clear answers. You will be using techniques like speech recognition and data processing.

8. Build a smartphone app that uses a neural network to identify the origin of a fish based on photos taken against a template. The app would be used to enforce the protection of overfished areas between Honduras and Belize. The skills required include image classification, neural network training, and programming for mobile app development. 

9. Use AI to create tools that can do automated checks for quality and ease of understanding for student essays. This will help students improve their writing skills quickly by improving the feedback mechanism. You will be required to use NLP and data processing techniques. 

10. Apply computer vision to analyze medical images for the detection of various medical conditions, such as tumors, fractures, or retinal diseases. You could explore the scope, development, and ethics of deep learning models to enhance the efficiency of the diagnosing process. 

11. Use AI systems to create tools that make documentation easier. This could involve using a large language model (LLM) to create detailed templates according to a user’s needs. You will be using techniques such as Natural Language Processing (NLP),  computer vision (if images are involved), and data processing. 

12.  Use AI-driven methods to transform natural language into musical melodies. Using MIDI files and NLP models, you could translate the natural language into a structured format for music generation. This project could help bridge the gap between literature and music and expand research on the usability of AI-generated music. 

Topic 3: Robotics

Robotics would be a great research option to pursue if you’re interested in both engineering and computer science with real-world applications. This would require a lot more hands-on work as compared to other research areas in this blog, so take the availability of time, space, and tools into consideration. If your school has a robotics lab, you could also pitch the project to one of your teachers so that you can conduct the more mechanical parts of the project in the safety of your school. 

13. Develop an algorithm to enable a robot to navigate and interact with an unfamiliar environment. You will need to extract information from images to help the robots understand the environment better and perform tasks more efficiently. This will require skills in computer vision and remote sensors. 

14. Perform a literature review on a verbal interaction between a human and a robot. You could try focusing on the depth, sincerity, or humor that you might observe in the robot’s speech. You will need to be familiar with digital ethics, critical thinking, and deep reading. 

15. Research the use of robots in medicine, such as high-precision surgical robots. This is a good option for you if you’re interested in the medical industry but want to put your computer science skills to good use. This will require a deep understanding of medical procedures and patient safety to create effective and safe robotic systems. 

Topic 4: Data Analysis

As a potential computer scientist, the importance of data that is used by computer systems to make interpretations and inferences must be clear to you. You need to collect sound, clear, and accurate data to make sure that we’re making the correct inferences while making sure all confounding variables are in order. 

You could use tools such as R, SQL, and Python to perform computations on data sets, make sound observations, and provide useful outputs. If you’re looking to improve your Python and coding skills, check out this list of resources to help you out!

You could pick one of the following, or related questions to study, that come under the umbrella of data science.

16. Analyze  Boston Marathon Data (or any other marathon data) to check whether people get better at pacing the more years they participate in a marathon. You could use R or any other data scraping software to scrape and clean the marathon data and perform exploratory analysis. 

17. Compare and evaluate the performance of various unsupervised anomaly detection methods (e.g., Isolation Forest) applied to data generated by Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Your study could consider factors such as detection accuracy, computational efficiency, and adaptability to evolving data patterns. 

18. Analyze the impact of social media usage on the mental health of a certain age group is a growing concern in today’s society. You could perform an analysis by conducting surveys and interviews, and make inferences about the correlation between social media engagement and mental health indicators in that demographic. 

19. Create a machine learning model to identify relationships between genres and how we classify them. You could use neural networks and waveforms to classify songs into different genres. 

20. Conduct a study exploring how tech company policies influence employee mental health. Create a model that will use logistical regression and neural network techniques to identify which policies and personal factors play the most significant role, further helping these companies in building effective mental health support. 

21. Use machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative categories. This would require training algorithms to identify and label data as positive or negative based on certain keywords and sentiments. 

22. Analyze how NLP techniques can be used to extract emotional tones and opinions in tweets. This research could be used to optimize the process of parsing through content and making sure community guidelines are met.

23. Create a predictive model for traffic congestion in your city by collecting historical traffic data, weather information, and event schedules. This project would require you to use machine learning algorithms to analyze the data and generate real-time forecasts, similar to Google Maps. 

24. Analyze the impact of different policies and interventions on public health outcomes. You could explore topics such as disease prevention or health promotion strategies. By analyzing the model outputs, you can assess and make inferences on the potential effectiveness of these policies in improving overall population health. 

25.  Analyze social media or any other text data to gauge public opinion on a certain topic such as the Fairness of AI or any other socio-political issue that you may be interested in. Collect a diverse data set related to the topic and then apply NLP techniques to classify the sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral. Additionally, you could use topic modeling to identify key themes within the data. 

Topic 5: HCI (Human-Computer Interaction)

Human-Computer Interaction, or HCI, is a field of research that involves the research and innovation of tools and applications which provide the user with an enhanced experience. Involving yourself in a field such as HCI, which has had relatively less innovation, will allow you to have a broader outlook on the subject without the weight of pre-existing research. This could involve improving the HCI in realms such as medicine, marketing, and design. The below ideas should help inspire you: 

26. Develop a low-cost sensor with an Arduino board to measure air quality, noise levels, temperature, etc. to build a small smart home device. Arduino boards are used to read inputs and turn them into an output. You will need familiarity with engineering and sensor systems to pursue this project.

27. Investigate the use of machine learning in predicting and improving user satisfaction concerning a specific application. This will require you to develop machine learning algorithms, perform data collection, and make significant inferences from that data.

28. Perform an accessibility evaluation on different websites using tools like WAVE or WebAIM. These tools evaluate whether or not websites are in line with web content accessibility guidelines(WCAG). You will need to be familiar with interpreting the reports generated by WAVE and WebAIM, performing analysis on them, and inferring meaningful data from them.

Topic 6: Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and the Metaverse

With the rise of the Metaverse and Apple’s new VR headset Vision Pro on the way, there is an increasing concern about how VR and AR systems are going to affect people’s day-to-day lives, and how helpful they could be. This has led to an increase in studies about the effects of this technology. If you find the virtual world interesting, consider pursuing one of the research topics below: 

29. Explore the use of AR technologies in educational contexts, such as creating AR learning materials for designing AR experiences that support learning. You will need to implement your programming, 3D modeling, and design skills by using software tools like Unity3D or ARCore. 

30. How does an immersive virtual reality like Metaverse affect the quality of our social interactions? Explore how the Metaverse brings up new questions about digital habits, safety, and ethicality in a virtual space.

31. Can virtual reality be used as a mental health or well-being tool to help people reduce stress and anxiety? Use 3D modeling and programming to develop an app on ARCore that would help people reduce their anxiety in different ways, such as helping them sleep using a soothing environment. Also, explore the implications of such an app and the possible negative impacts of this technology. 

Topic 7: Game Development

According to studies, the number of gamers worldwide is expected to hit 3.32 billion by 2024, which makes game development a highly in-demand skill to have. You could tackle this field in multiple ways, such as backend game development, analysis of various games, user targeting and, using machine learning to improve user experience. The ideas below should interest you if you’re a gamer or someone interested in game design: 

32. Research and perform analysis on how different game mechanics impact player engagement and enjoyment. This project will require you to extract meaningful data from a dataset of gamers and their experiences and perform analysis on it using data scraping software like R or SQL. 

33. Research the effectiveness of using game-based learning in an educational setting. Based on the research, you can also design a game-based learning tool for a certain topic using Unity or Godot. This project requires skills in game design, analysis, and programming.  

34. Try developing an AI-powered game that would adjust its difficulty by adapting to the player’s skill level. This would be a better alternative to how games have 6 different difficulties in games and would make the gaming process a lot easier for players. You could also add a research paper addressing how you came about developing the difficulty system and what parameters you used to decide upon player difficulty. This would require skills in machine learning, data analysis, game design, and algorithm design principles to develop the adaptive learning system.

35. Design and build a game from scratch that increases awareness among users about a specific socially relevant topic that you might be interested in, such as renewable energy or financial literacy. This would require you to use game designing software such as Unity or Godot, write the code of the game and some amount of user experience design knowledge to make the game attractive.  Supplement this with a research paper detailing the extent of awareness spread by the game by running play-tests. 

36. Compare and evaluate the decision-making process of humans and a reinforcement learning agent in Texas Hold’em Poker. This would involve a cross-examination of the strategies utilized by both the human players and the AI agents. You will then have to collect and analyze the data and draw meaningful inferences about the effectiveness of certain approaches.

Topic 8: Cybersecurity

There are over 2,200 cyber attacks every day according to studies. That’s about 1 cyber attack every 39 seconds. This makes digital privacy and cyber-security a very important field of research, which is aimed towards increasing security on the internet, spotting malware, and protecting systems from such malware. Here are some ideas you can pursue: 

37. Analyze the effectiveness of different biometric authentication methods in increasing cybersecurity. This will include assessing technical aspects of biometric systems, such as accuracy, vulnerability to spoofing, and scalability. 

38. Create a system to classify network traffic into malicious and non-malicious. This can be used to identify and block malicious traffic. You will need to be familiar with network engineering and cybersecurity to pursue this topic. 

Topic 9: Network Infrastructure

Networks is a field of computer science that covers communication channels that allow computers and other devices to connect and communicate with each other. Conducting research in this field has an advantage as it has a vast amount of data that you can work on from different locations. This will give you the flexibility that you may need when deciding on what to research, based on what’s accessible to you with regard to time, resources, and complexity. If that sounds interesting to you, consider the following topics:

39. Evaluating the security and privacy implications of edge computing in healthcare networks. You could explore what makes edge computing dangerous and why using it in healthcare could be a threat. This will require you to use concepts in networking, cybersecurity, and an understanding of how healthcare information systems work. 

40. Investigate the use of software-defined networking in enhancing network security and performance. This will require proficiency in network design, protocol analysis, and the ability to work with software-defined networking (SDN) controllers and switches. 

If you’re looking to build unique projects in the field of AI/ML, consider applying to Veritas AI! 

Veritas AI was founded by Harvard graduate students, and through the programs, you get a chance to learn the fundamentals of AI and computer science while collaborating on real-world projects. You can also work 1-1 with mentors from universities like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and more to create unique, personalized projects. In the past year, we had over 1000 students learn data science and AI with us. You can apply here!

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