How to research and find real industry/data problems to solve?

Hi, i've got an upcoming project and i want to do a data engineering project.

Our professor advised us to start researching problems to solve. I do not want to replicate generic top 10 data engineering projects.

I'm currently looking for clues in opensource projects and data journals.

I'd appreciate sources/links on where to start and what to look for if anyone has done this sort of thing before.