15 Disease Research Project Ideas for High School Students

If you're a high school student interested in medicine, biology, public health, or biomedical engineering, completing a disease research project can be an effective way to explore these fields in depth. Independent research allows you to investigate questions that may not be covered in a traditional classroom setting while developing analytical, writing, and problem-solving skills.

Choosing a disease research project in high school can also help you identify specific areas of interest before college. Whether you are interested in infectious diseases, genetics, neuroscience, or public health, research can provide valuable exposure to scientific challenges. Disease research spans thousands of conditions and many different scientific disciplines, meaning there are countless ways to approach a disease research project in high school. Reviewing multiple options can help you find a topic that aligns with your interests, skills, and long-term academic goals. 

Why should I do research in high school?

Research projects require you to manage long-term goals, organize deadlines, and balance multiple responsibilities, helping build time management and project-planning skills. You learn how to evaluate scientific literature, assess evidence, interpret data, and communicate findings clearly. These skills are valuable across many academic disciplines.

Beyond high school, research experience can be valuable when applying for internships, jobs, undergraduate research opportunities, and eventually graduate or professional programs. The experience of designing a project, analyzing information, and presenting conclusions mirrors many of the tasks expected in higher education and professional settings. 

In this article, we highlight 15 disease research project ideas for high school students across fields such as epidemiology, genetics, neuroscience, environmental health, and biotechnology. 

If you’re looking for online summer research programs, check out our blog here.

Key takeaways

• These 15 project ideas span epidemiology, genetics, neuroscience, immunology, environmental health, microbiology, public health, and AI in medicine, so students with a wide range of scientific interests can find a topic that aligns with their goals.

• Most projects draw on publicly available datasets from sources such as the CDC, WHO, and national health agencies, making them accessible to high school students without requiring access to a laboratory or specialized equipment.

• Several projects, including infectious disease modeling, air pollution and respiratory disease, and Type 2 diabetes and lifestyle factors, combine quantitative analysis with public health concepts, making them well-suited for students interested in statistics, data science, or epidemiology.

• Projects such as AI in disease diagnosis, antibiotic resistance, and gut microbiome research connect disease biology with emerging technologies and research frontiers, offering strong preparation for students considering careers in medicine, biomedical engineering, or bioinformatics.

• Students looking for structured mentorship to develop any of these projects into a full research paper can apply to the Lumiere Research Scholar Program, which pairs high school students one-on-one with PhD mentors across science and health-related fields.

1. Modeling the Spread of Infectious Diseases

In this public health-focused disease research project, you’ll study how infectious diseases spread throughout populations. Because extensive public datasets are available for diseases such as COVID-19 and seasonal influenza, you can analyze data from organizations such as the CDC, WHO, and national health agencies to examine infection rates, hospitalizations, mortality trends, and vaccination patterns. You can then apply epidemiological methods such as compartmental or SIR models to simulate disease spread and predict future trends. Students with programming experience can also compare multiple models to evaluate how different assumptions influence disease forecasts. This interdisciplinary project combines public health, biology, mathematics, and data science. 

2. Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria

Antimicrobial resistance is widely considered one of the most significant global public health challenges. Recent surveillance reports from the World Health Organization have documented increasing resistance levels across numerous pathogen-antibiotic combinations, making it a growing global health crisis. In this project, you can study how bacteria develop resistance through analyzing case studies of widely used drugs and the pathogenic bacteria they target. You can measure the correlation between resistance to a specific antibiotic and its prescribing rate or misuse, examine differences in resistance rates across the world, or conduct a comparative analysis of different antibiotics. This project combines microbiology, medicine, and public health.

3. Genetic Mutations and Cancer Risk

This project examines the role of inherited genetic mutations in the development of cancer. You’ll hone in on a specific cancer and gene, such as BRCA1 and breast or ovarian cancer, and draw on genomic datasets or clinical research reports to understand how mutations affect cell growth and tumor development. You can then use these findings to evaluate or identify strategies for proactive genetic screening, prevention, and treatment. This topic introduces students to genetics, oncology, and precision medicine.

4. The Biology of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease affects approximately 1 in 9 Americans over the age of 65 and remains one of the most extensively studied neurodegenerative disorders. However, effective treatments remain limited, primarily focusing on symptom management and slowing progression. As amyloid plaques and tau proteins have been identified as primarily causal factors in neural degeneration, recent medical research has substantially targeted these areas for treatment innovations. In this project, you can engage with modern neurological research and recent clinical trials to evaluate proposed treatment approaches and their alignment with the latest medical findings. This project provides exposure to neuroscience, medicine, and biomedical research.

5. Climate Change and Vector-Borne Diseases

The increase in global warming has been accompanied by higher rates and geographic spread of vector-borne diseases, such as mosquito-transmitted diseases like Malaria and Dengue fever. In this research project, you’ll examine data from climate and disease incidence reports to identify whether a meaningful correlation exists between the two. You can also integrate geographic information systems tools to map changes in mosquito habitats, as their presence is a strong marker of transmission risk. Through this project, you’ll expand your knowledge of disease and global health while exploring topics in environmental science. This project combines environmental science, epidemiology, geography, and public health.

6. Autoimmune Diseases and Immune System Dysfunction

Autoimmune diseases such as Lupus are largely understudied, making them an intriguing research topic. In this project, you can study immune signaling errors in autoimmune diseases and how these diseases trigger the immune system to attack healthy tissue. Conducting a literature review, diagramming immune pathways, and modeling signaling processes in healthy versus diseased immune systems is one potential approach. You can focus on a single autoimmune disease or research multiple diseases to explore differences and common factors. This topic combines immunology, biology, and medical research.

7. Vaccination Acceptance and Public Health

In this project, you’ll study public perceptions on vaccination, connecting disease research with topics across sociology, psychology, public health, and epidemiology. One approach could involve analyzing data from national surveys, polls, or research reports to examine factors correlated with vaccine acceptance and hesitancy. If you’re technologically oriented, you could consider pursuing a web scraping approach to extract user opinions on vaccination from webpages, blogs, or social media for independent analysis. Potential next steps might include developing communication strategies to increase vaccination rates, addressing the most common misconceptions you notice.

8. Type 2 Diabetes and Lifestyle Factors

Type 2 diabetes has become an increasingly important public health concern and is strongly associated with factors such as obesity, physical inactivity, and dietary habits. In this project, you can analyze public health datasets to investigate how lifestyle trends relate to diabetes prevalence across different populations. You might compare outcomes across age groups, geographic regions, or income levels to identify disparities in disease burden. The growing use of GLP-1-based medications has also introduced new questions about future diabetes trends. You could examine publicly available data on prescription rates and explore how these therapies may influence disease prevention and management in the future.

9. Mental Health Disorders in Adolescents

Mental health disorders have become an increasingly important public health concern among adolescents and young adults. In this research project, you can analyze national or international mental health datasets to identify trends in diagnoses, treatment access, and outcomes. You may also investigate factors associated with changes in mental health, such as social media use, educational pressures, public health crises, and access to support services. Researchers have proposed several explanations for rising diagnosis rates, including greater awareness, improved screening, and increased willingness to seek mental health support. This project combines psychology, public health, sociology, and data analysis.

10. HIV Treatment Advances

Advances in HIV treatment have transformed HIV from a frequently fatal disease into a manageable chronic condition for many individuals with access to modern therapies. In this project, you can investigate how antiretroviral treatments work and evaluate their impact on life expectancy, disease transmission, and quality of life. A quantitative approach could involve analyzing long-term trends in infection rates, mortality rates, or treatment access. You could also examine how public health initiatives and global health policies have contributed to improvements in HIV outcomes over time. This project combines molecular biology, medicine, and public health.

11. Air Pollution and Respiratory Disease

The prevalence of respiratory diseases like Asthma and chronic bronchitis is linked to air pollution levels in individual communities. In this research project, you’ll work at the intersections of disease, environmental science, and public health to study this trend in your own community. You’ll collect local air quality data and compare it with regional rates of hospitalization for respiratory diseases. You can then compare it with publicly reported data from other regions, ideally drawing on a variety of settings (urban, suburban, rural) with diverse pollution levels. You’ll conduct statistical analysis to determine whether higher rates of respiratory disease correlate with higher pollution levels, both locally and nationally. You should also consider additional factors such as smoking rates, pollen levels, healthcare access, and socioeconomic conditions when interpreting results. This project combines environmental science, public health, and statistics.

12. Rare Diseases and Drug Development

Effective treatments for rare diseases are often limited by insufficient funding, given their relatively low prevalence. In this disease research project, you can study the drug development process for rare diseases and potential incentives. Examining “orphaned” drugs, rare disease treatments for which development or production is discontinued, can provide an interesting case study project. Through this approach, you can hone in on specific instances of drugs becoming “orphaned”, analyzing topics like financial impediments and reasons for discontinuation, and the predicted efficacy of the treatment. You can supplement your case study by examining larger-scale trends among these drugs. You can also evaluate the impact of the U.S. Orphan Drug Act of 1983, which created incentives such as tax credits, grants, and market exclusivity to encourage research into rare disease treatments. This project combines medicine, economics, policy, and pharmaceutical science.

13. Artificial Intelligence in Disease Diagnosis

Artificial intelligence and computer vision are increasingly common technologies used for diagnostics and medical imaging. With rapid advances in AI, it seems likely that these technologies will continue to gain prominence in medical settings. You can consider pursuing research on a specific type of AI diagnostics, such as using machine learning models to identify cancer from radiology scans or to make predictive judgments about future outcomes based on current patient data. You can also consider developing a similar approach on your own, such as building a classification model and working with medical imaging data and research papers. This project is particularly relevant for those interested in bioinformatics, computer science, or medical technology.

14. Obesity as a Risk Factor for Chronic Disease

Obesity poses health challenges to nearly 40% of U.S. adults, increasing the risk of heart disease, stroke, and other health conditions. For this research project, you can analyze epidemiological data and public health reports to quantify the relationship between obesity rates and the prevalence of obesity-related diseases. As insufficient access to healthy foods is a common cause of obesity, you can also explore potential trends based on socioeconomic conditions, rural regions, and “food deserts”, or age, as poverty disproportionately affects children under 18 and the elderly. Through this project, you’ll build research experience across statistics, medicine, and social science. 

15. The Gut Microbiome and Disease

This microbiology-focused project explores how the gut microbiome influences human health and disease. Researchers have linked disruptions in gut microbial communities, known as dysbiosis, to conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, and cardiovascular disease. One approach is to conduct a literature review or meta-analysis comparing microbiome diversity across healthy and diseased populations. You may also compare findings across multiple diseases to identify common microbiome-related patterns and potential gaps in current research. This project introduces concepts from microbiology, medicine, and systems biology. 

Frequently asked questions

What are good disease research project ideas for high school students?

Strong starting points include infectious disease modeling using CDC or WHO data, genetic mutations and cancer risk using genomic datasets, climate change and vector-borne diseases, gut microbiome and disease through a literature review, and AI in disease diagnosis for students with a coding background.

Do disease research projects for high school students require lab access?

Not necessarily. Many strong projects, such as modeling disease spread, analyzing vaccination acceptance, studying obesity and chronic disease, and examining mental health trends, rely on publicly available datasets and literature reviews rather than wet lab work, making them accessible from home.

Which disease research topics are best for students interested in data science or AI?

Students with a quantitative or technical background might consider infectious disease modeling using SIR or compartmental models, AI in disease diagnosis through building or evaluating machine learning models on medical imaging data, or vaccination acceptance using web scraping or survey data analysis.

How can high school students get mentorship for a disease research project?

The Lumiere Research Scholar Program pairs students one-on-one with PhD mentors to develop an independent research paper over 12 weeks, across topics including medicine, biology, public health, and biomedical science. The Lumiere Research Inclusion Foundation offers the same program fully funded for low-income students.

What skills do disease research projects build for high school students?

Depending on the topic, students develop skills in scientific literature review, data analysis, statistical reasoning, scientific writing, and research communication. These skills are directly applicable to college coursework, research internship applications, and graduate or professional program admissions.

One Other Option – The Lumiere Research Scholar Program

If you’re interested in pursuing independent research, consider applying to one of the Lumiere Research Scholar Programs, selective online high school programs for students founded with researchers at Harvard and Oxford. Last year, we had over 4,000 students apply for 500 spots in the program! You can find the application form here, check out students’ reviews of the program here and here.

Also check out the Lumiere Research Inclusion Foundation, a non-profit research program for talented, low-income students. Last year, we had 150 students on full need-based financial aid!

Stephen is one of the founders of Lumiere and a graduate of Harvard College, where he earned an A.B. in Statistics. He founded Lumiere as a PhD student at Harvard Business School. Lumiere is a selective research program where students work 1-1 with a research mentor to develop an independent research paper.