When she was a baby, 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 best way we lived it slowed down on the farm,” she says. “It was a pleasant change of tempo.”
Nowadays, Honeycutt, a double main in computation and cognition and linguistics, nonetheless finds herself shifting between a number of worlds which can be concurrently linked and distinctly completely different. Her analysis pursuits lie on the intersection of human considering and consciousness, language studying and acquisition, expertise, 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 mates, 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 a scarcity of auditory enter.
“There are such a lot of issues which can be 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 raised perceive the variations between neural networks, AI, and the way every processes data.” She’s wished to check these for a very long time, she says. “When folks need to handle language deficits like aphasia, for instance, and also you’re immersed in a number of areas of investigation to search out solutions, you get to be taught 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 may discover elsewhere.” Her affinity for math and English, alongside a want to pursue the sort of laptop science work that “centered folks,” elevated the chance that she may proceed in her most well-liked areas of investigation with the help of the Institute’s college 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 inspiration for my work,” she says.
Her resolution to main in linguistics together with computation and cognition meant she may join her pursuits in mind operate and expertise with a data-driven strategy to language research and processing. “Majoring in linguistics highlighted the facility of scientific rigor to prepare and analyze an enormous quantity of chaotic, human-centric knowledge,” she says. Her coursework bolstered the worth of her resolution.
Honeycutt lauds the liberty MIT’s deal with interdisciplinary research offers. “Researchers are exploring variations between human and LLM language fashions and processing, and a number of that work is going on at MIT,” she says. “MIT offers 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 motive I’m on the trail I’ve chosen,” she continues, one which incorporates a deal with 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 creating laws to assist enhance literacy amongst South Africans.
“Linguistic range 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 colleges as a result of they’ll’t use the languages they’re studying — like Afrikaans — with their households at house.”
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 supplied at MIT. “MIT’s strategy to linguistics facilities phrases and approaches its research like a math downside, whereas sociolinguistics contains essential 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 enable her to each examine her analysis targets 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 Neighborhood Service committee, she’s main efforts to create connections with college students dwelling off campus.
Honeycutt additionally volunteers with the Neighborhood Constitution Faculty of Cambridge, working to enhance outcomes for underachieving college students. As a volunteer, she’s capable of pilot among the training concepts being developed in her coursework. “I need to assist underperforming college students in the identical method some establishments assist high-performing college students,” she says.
The human factor
Language shapes the methods its customers view the world, in response to Honeycutt. “I’m concerned about how language can constrain thought,” she says. Language mastery can be a precious instrument in gauging emotional intelligence. “It’s essential 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 essential in areas like translation and psychology, the place nuance could be essential. She additionally believes that studying and language acquisition are important instruments in creating efficient self-awareness. Language is a medium for thought and offers guardrails to enhance understanding.
“Entry to a big vocabulary, together with phrases for feelings, can enhance 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. Meaning legislation faculty and public coverage applications, maybe at an establishment that provides a twin diploma monitor.
“I need to lengthen alternatives to underserved college students,” she says. “Issues in coverage areas are tough, partially, as a result of they defy straightforward categorization and contain a number of stakeholders.” Schooling, Honeycutt says, “is a enjoyable downside to attempt to remedy.” She needs to help efforts to enact lasting change by enhancing literacy, making certain linguistic range, 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 subject 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 proceed investigating language, its utilization, and impacts on folks and their lives. We will’t remedy training challenges, enhance AI and entry to AI-enabled instruments, and additional the research of linguistics with out institutional and group help.
“Help analysis,” Honeycutt says. “Don’t quit on making an attempt to resolve these issues.”
