Finding just the right research project for students can be challenging at all levels. However, working on one’s own project could provide powerful motivation, and can turn out to be a transformative experience, so we strive to have more and more students participate in some form of research.In this talk we are going to present a few different research projects that grew out of a mathematical modeling class, an undergraduate bio-math program and some Math Circles. We illustrate ways of finding/creating projects and show how simple-looking problems could go further and further and lead to surprising connections and results.