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 grew to become 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.”
Nowadays, Honeycutt, a double main in computation and cognition and linguistics, nonetheless finds herself shifting between a number of worlds which are concurrently related and distinctly completely different. Her analysis pursuits lie on the intersection of human pondering and consciousness, language studying and acquisition, know-how, and social group interplay and influence.
Honeycutt’s curiosity in language and the methods it might form how we predict and stay grew alongside lifelong investments in math and science. She realized French from her relationships with Haitian household buddies, 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 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 raised 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 should 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, partly, 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 need to pursue the type of laptop science work that “centered folks,” elevated the chance that she may proceed in her most popular 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 inspiration for my work,” she says.
Her determination to main in linguistics together with computation and cognition meant she may join her pursuits in mind operate and know-how with a data-driven strategy to language examine and processing. “Majoring in linguistics highlighted the ability of scientific rigor to prepare and analyze an unlimited quantity of chaotic, human-centric information,” she says. Her coursework bolstered the worth of her determination.
Honeycutt lauds the liberty MIT’s give attention to interdisciplinary examine gives. “Researchers are exploring variations between human and LLM language fashions and processing, and a number of that work is occurring at MIT,” she says. “MIT gives a rigorous flexibility that enables me to indulge a number of educational 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 give attention to language acquisition, training coverage, LLMs’ computational prospects and limitations, and training reform.
Honeycutt’s analysis continued on a sequence of MISTI journeys in 2025. She traveled to South Africa in the summertime, the place she labored on the South African Human Rights Commission’s “Right to Read” 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 kids 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 dwelling.”
In fall 2025, she took a MISTI journey to Edinburgh, Scotland, the place she studied sociolinguistics. She realized the worth of contemplating different approaches to the model of linguistics supplied at MIT. “MIT’s strategy to linguistics facilities phrases and approaches its examine like a math downside, whereas sociolinguistics contains necessary 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 objectives and create group. “I accomplished a coverage internship in Washington, D.C. in 2024,” she remembers.
She’s a member of Theta Delta Chi, a fraternity comprising a various group of undergraduates from quite a lot of educational backgrounds. She performs women’s club soccer and is an officer with the MIT Undergraduate Association. As a co-chair of the Community 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 in a position to pilot a few of the training concepts being developed in her coursework. “I wish to assist underperforming college students in the identical method some establishments help high-performing college students,” she says.
The human component
Language shapes the methods its customers view the world, based on Honeycutt. “I’m thinking about how language can constrain thought,” she says. Language mastery can be a invaluable software in gauging emotional intelligence. “It’s necessary that individuals purchase and perceive language at school,” she argues. “Folks ought to have entry to a language that enables them to successfully talk what they’re pondering.”
Having phrases for feelings will help folks course of them, Honeycutt believes. That is necessary in areas like translation and psychology, the place nuance might be necessary. She additionally believes that studying and language acquisition are important instruments in creating efficient self-awareness. Language is a medium for thought and gives guardrails to enhance understanding.
“Entry to a big vocabulary, together with phrases for feelings, can enhance your emotional intelligence,” she says.
With a strong educational basis targeted on cognition, language, and AI in place, Honeycutt plans to pursue research in regulation and coverage after commencement. Which means regulation college and public coverage packages, maybe at an establishment that provides a twin diploma observe.
“I wish to prolong alternatives to underserved college students,” she says. “Issues in coverage areas are tough, partly, as a result of they defy simple categorization and contain a number of stakeholders.” Training, Honeycutt says, “is a enjoyable downside to attempt to remedy.” She desires to assist 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 examine in a area that may reply all of the questions, Honeycutt argues. By combining the science of mind operate with the social and mathematical points 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 examine of linguistics with out institutional and group assist.
“Help analysis,” Honeycutt says. “Don’t surrender on making an attempt to unravel these issues.”
