The aim of this list is to provide inspiration if you are struggling to choose a topic, (where a

problem or issue exists), for your Position Paper. Do remember that:

● The suggestions below are only examples of topics used in good papers taken from
previous courses, and there is no guarantee that choosing one of these topics will mean
you will write a successful paper.

● The list is not exhaustive. In other words, you can definitely choose a topic that is not on
the list, but do remember that it must be a topic that is being discussed (as explained
below).

● As already discussed on the course, the best way to choose a title is to first do some
research (normally browsing a few recently published journals from your field) to see
what problems or issues are being discussed. After all, you don’t want to choose a topic,
issue or problem on which little is being written. Not only will this make it difficult for
you to find articles, it may also indicate that there is actually no debate in the literature
about your problem or issue. There are a number of reasons for why this might be the
case: perhaps that the problem or issue has already been resolved by the scientific
community, or even that it isn’t a problem or issue which the scientific community has
ever felt the need to address.

To summarise all of the above, the most important point to remember is that there must
always be an ongoing debate about your problem or issue. After all, if your position in the
paper is agreed on by everyone, then it is a rather pointless paper, and certainly not
argumentative.

Major Topic

Chemical and (Consider the requirements of the target application)

Biological
Engineering

Selenium removal from mining and process wastewater

Environmentally friendly heat rejection methods for power plants

Determination of parabens in cosmetic compounds

Eliminating pollutants resulting from the dying process

Water filtration: UV radiation and chlorination

 High-throughput methods for drug discovery and understanding
disease progression

Peptide-based drug delivery, drug discovery and biomaterials

Design and generation of novel enzymes through incorporation of

unnatural amino acids

Computation design of new enzymes with specific properties

The use of fluorescent chemicals/proteins in biology

Optimum delivery method of CRISPR Gene Editing

Chemistry (Consider the requirements of the target application)

Delivery of drugs to the cerebrovascular system under pathologies

Air analysis

Synthesis of ammonia

Seaweed extracts to improve battery performance

Photoreduction of metal ions

Reducing ocean acidification

Biomaterial for scar healing

Fingerprint detection

Carbon dating

Clean water supplies

Production of bioethanol from algae vs. corn

Water process vs. organic solvent methods for caffeine extraction

Computer (Consider the requirements of the target application)

Engineering

Web information retrieval (IR) methods

Wi-Fi data transfer mechanisms

Prediction of future events in business using algorithms

Identifying and removing unsolicited bulk emails

 Agile vs. waterfall methods in dealing with the self-scalability problem
in self-regulated software

Credit risk analysis using classification and regression trees (CART) and
K-nearest neighbor (k-NN)

Sarcasm detection: rule-based and pattern-based approaches

(algorithms)

IoT (Internet of Things)

Data warehousing

Machine learning

Comparing Sensor Technologies for Environment Perception in

Automated Driving Systems

Sentiment Detection on Social Media

Runtime problem of large data processing

Image classification

Electrical and (Consider the specific application)

Electronics
Engineering

Renewable sources of energy

Energy efficient motors

Machine design technology

Wireless power transmission

LED lighting for energy efficiency

Electric tractions systems

Robotics

Drones

UHVDC technology

Self-driven vehicles

Lightweight Wireless Power Transfer for Drones

 Wireless Charging of Neural Implants

Comparing Sensor Technologies for Environment Perception in

Automated Driving Systems

Onshore vs. offshore wind turbines for electricity generation

Efficiency in electric vehicles: fuel cells and batteries

Hydrogen storage: salt caverns vs. high-pressure tanks

Industrial (Specify the circumstance)

Engineering

Assembly line balancing problems

The use of EHR (Electronic Health Records) compared to PHR (Personal

Health Records) in health organizations

Metaheuristics

(Types of) vehicle used in the (transportation of specific goods)

Facilities layout and location

Uncertainty in manufacturing

Lean manufacturing

Supply chain management

Manufacturing strategies

Multi-objective optimisation

Queue Management Systems

Mechanical (Consider the specific application)

Engineering

Performance of turbine blades

Materials that can withstand high temperatures

Carbon fiber analysis and applications

Composites

Finite element analysis with mat lab

Advanced manufacturing techniques

 Fuel cells

Electrolytic coatings

Additive manufacturing

Haptic gloves for the controlling of robot arms

Recovering Waste Heat from Diesel Engines

Methods of reducing knock in gasoline engines.

Medicine (Consider the patient profile and/or the nature of the medical
condition)

Eradicating Staphylococcus aureus biofilms in antibiotic-resistant

bacterial infections

Insulin delivery systems

Preventing vitamin deficiency

Noise induced hearing loss due to acoustic trauma

Machine learning techniques for the early diagnosis of diabetes

Wearables for health monitoring

Nanotechnology for drug delivery

Medical applications of artificial intelligence

Crisper-Cas9 technologies

Alzheimer’s research

Molecular (Consider the patient profile and/or the nature of the medical
Biology and condition)
Genetics

Detection methods for genetic illnesses in the unborn fetus

CRISPR and genome editing

RNA interference

Drug delivery

DNA synthesis and sequence

 Stem cell research

Maturation of sperm cells

Cytokines and growth factors

Cellular processes with growth to achieve the appropriate size

Predictive models for cancer cell line-specific dependency

Physics (Consider how to apply theoretical concepts to practical questions)

Using memory-based forecasting techniques over theoretical models

to predict solar particle events

Compatibility of Solar Sail and Ramjet Fusion for space exploration