In high school, I wanted to do serious machine-learning research on avalanche danger. I developed an original methodology around a very limited dataset. There was no recipe: some of the most important work was deciding which physical assumptions could make the problem feasible without making it scientifically meaningless.
My mentor understood research and machine learning, but not snow science. That was valuable. He did not give me the scientific answer. He challenged the methodology, asked for evidence, examined the results, and helped me determine what needed to happen next. I still made the intellectual decisions.
The work was accepted for publication in Frontiers in Earth Science: Cryospheric Sciences. Question23 grew from one realization: much of a great research mentor's transferable value is process expertise, not already knowing your subject.
Interest → constrained problem → methodology → experiments → paper → accepted for publication
Your question will look completely different. The process won't.