When she was a toddler, MIT senior Olivia Honeycutt would spend summers on her grandparents’ farm in rural Alabama exterior Birmingham. The sensible and cultural variations between farm and metropolis life turned extra pronounced by comparability. “Life and the way in which we lived it slowed down on the farm,” she says. “It was a pleasant change of tempo.”
Today, Honeycutt, a double main in computation and cognition and linguistics, nonetheless finds herself shifting between a number of worlds which are concurrently linked and distinctly completely different. Her analysis pursuits lie on the intersection of human considering and consciousness, language studying and acquisition, know-how, and social group interplay and impression.
Honeycutt’s curiosity in language and the methods it might probably form how we predict and dwell grew alongside lifelong investments in math and science. She realized French from her relationships with Haitian household associates, and American Signal Language due to one other pal’s deaf sibling. She was fascinated with how audio system from these teams communicated and the way the mind can reorganize itself when confronted with an absence of auditory enter.
“There are such a lot of issues which are completely different about signal language and spoken language,” she says. “Talking in a number of languages and dialects whereas managing the emotional and cultural nuances multilingualism presents can shift your expertise of the world and of your self.” Working in these areas creates analysis alternatives in disciplines as various as neurology, giant language fashions (LLMs), psychology, and public coverage.
“There’s fascinating work underway in neurolinguistics,” Honeycutt notes, “together with making an attempt to higher perceive the variations between neural networks, AI, and the way every processes info.” She’s needed to check these for a very long time, she says. “When folks must handle language deficits like aphasia, for instance, and also you’re immersed in a number of areas of investigation to seek out solutions, you get to study cool issues like how the mind ‘does’ language.”
An MIT strategy to check
Honeycutt selected MIT, partially, as a result of the computation and cognition main was “not one thing I might discover elsewhere.” Her affinity for math and English, alongside a need to pursue the form of laptop science work that “centered folks,” elevated the probability that she might proceed in her most well-liked areas of investigation with the assist of the Institute’s school and different college students.
She discovered class 9.59J (Laboratory in Psycholinguistics), taught by professor of mind and cognitive sciences Ted Gibson, to be particularly enlightening. “It laid the muse for my work,” she says.
Her determination to main in linguistics together with computation and cognition meant she might join her pursuits in mind operate and know-how with a data-driven strategy to language research and processing. “Majoring in linguistics highlighted the ability of scientific rigor to arrange and analyze an unlimited quantity of chaotic, human-centric knowledge,” she says. Her coursework bolstered the worth of her determination.
Honeycutt lauds the liberty MIT’s concentrate on interdisciplinary research supplies. “Researchers are exploring variations between human and LLM language fashions and processing, and a variety of that work is occurring at MIT,” she says. “MIT supplies a rigorous flexibility that enables me to indulge a number of tutorial pursuits.”
It’s this flexibility that Honeycutt values most. “It’s the one purpose I’m on the trail I’ve chosen,” she continues, one which incorporates a concentrate on language acquisition, training coverage, LLMs’ computational potentialities and limitations, and training reform.
Honeycutt’s analysis continued on a collection of MISTI journeys in 2025. She traveled to South Africa in the summertime, the place she labored on the South African Human Rights Fee’s “Proper to Learn” marketing campaign. She explored connections between language processing and mind operate and supported analysis to assist in growing laws to assist improve literacy amongst South Africans.
“Linguistic variety presents vital challenges in South Africa,” she asserts. “One of many impacts of colonization on indigenous Africans, for instance, is that youngsters are sometimes pushed out of faculties as a result of they will’t use the languages they’re studying — like Afrikaans — with their households at dwelling.”
In fall 2025, she took a MISTI journey to Edinburgh, Scotland, the place she studied sociolinguistics. She realized the worth of contemplating various approaches to the model of linguistics provided at MIT. “MIT’s strategy to linguistics facilities phrases and approaches its research like a math drawback, whereas sociolinguistics contains vital cultural context,” she says. Connecting the 2 made for a extra full, holistic strategy to the work.
Honeycutt values a balanced strategy to her research, creating time for extracurricular actions that permit her to each examine her analysis objectives and create group. “I accomplished a coverage internship in Washington, D.C. in 2024,” she recollects.
She’s a member of Theta Delta Chi, a fraternity comprising a various group of undergraduates from a wide range of tutorial backgrounds. She performs ladies’s membership soccer and is an officer with the MIT Undergraduate Affiliation. As a co-chair of the Group Service committee, she’s main efforts to create connections with college students dwelling off campus.
Honeycutt additionally volunteers with the Group Constitution College of Cambridge, working to enhance outcomes for underachieving college students. As a volunteer, she’s in a position to pilot among the training concepts being developed in her coursework. “I wish to assist underperforming college students in the identical means some establishments assist high-performing college students,” she says.
The human component
Language shapes the methods its customers view the world, in keeping with Honeycutt. “I’m serious about how language can constrain thought,” she says. Language mastery can be a precious instrument in gauging emotional intelligence. “It’s vital that folks purchase and perceive language in class,” she argues. “Folks ought to have entry to a language that enables them to successfully talk what they’re considering.”
Having phrases for feelings can assist folks course of them, Honeycutt believes. That is vital in areas like translation and psychology, the place nuance might be vital. She additionally believes that studying and language acquisition are important instruments in growing efficient self-awareness. Language is a medium for thought and supplies guardrails to enhance understanding.
“Entry to a big vocabulary, together with phrases for feelings, can improve your emotional intelligence,” she says.
With a strong tutorial basis centered on cognition, language, and AI in place, Honeycutt plans to pursue research in legislation and coverage after commencement. Which means legislation college and public coverage applications, maybe at an establishment that provides a twin diploma monitor.
“I wish to prolong alternatives to underserved college students,” she says. “Issues in coverage areas are troublesome, partially, as a result of they defy straightforward categorization and contain a number of stakeholders.” Training, Honeycutt says, “is a enjoyable drawback to attempt to resolve.” She desires to assist efforts to enact lasting change by bettering literacy, making certain linguistic variety, and centering science and analysis when crafting and implementing efficient laws that advantages learners, establishments, households, and communities.
There’s no single research in a area that can reply all of the questions, Honeycutt argues. By combining the science of mind operate with the social and mathematical features of linguistics, she will be able to proceed investigating language, its utilization, and impacts on folks and their lives. We will’t resolve training challenges, enhance AI and entry to AI-enabled instruments, and additional the research of linguistics with out institutional and group assist.
“Assist analysis,” Honeycutt says. “Don’t hand over on making an attempt to resolve these issues.”
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