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 best way we lived it slowed down on the farm,” she says. “It was a pleasant change of tempo.”
Lately, Honeycutt, a double main in computation and cognition and linguistics, nonetheless finds herself transferring between a number of worlds which can be concurrently linked 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 may possibly form how we expect and stay grew alongside lifelong investments in math and science. She discovered French from her relationships with Haitian household buddies, and American Signal Language due to one other good friend’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 numerous as neurology, massive language fashions (LLMs), psychology, and public coverage.
“There’s fascinating work underway in neurolinguistics,” Honeycutt notes, “together with attempting to higher perceive the variations between neural networks, AI, and the way every processes data.” She’s needed to review 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 method to review
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 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 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 choice 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 method to language research and processing. “Majoring in linguistics highlighted the facility of scientific rigor to prepare and analyze an unlimited quantity of chaotic, human-centric knowledge,” she says. Her coursework bolstered the worth of her choice.
Honeycutt lauds the liberty MIT’s concentrate on interdisciplinary research gives. “Researchers are exploring variations between human and LLM language fashions and processing, and a variety of that work is going on at MIT,” she says. “MIT gives a rigorous flexibility that permits 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 encompasses 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 help 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 faculties as a result of they will’t use the languages they’re studying — like Afrikaans — with their households at residence.”
In fall 2025, she took a MISTI journey to Edinburgh, Scotland, the place she studied sociolinguistics. She discovered the worth of contemplating various approaches to the model of linguistics supplied at MIT. “MIT’s method 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 method to the work.
Honeycutt values a balanced method to her research, creating time for extracurricular actions that permit her to each examine her analysis targets 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 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 College of Cambridge, working to enhance outcomes for underachieving college students. As a volunteer, she’s capable of pilot a number of the training concepts being developed in her coursework. “I need to assist underperforming college students in the identical method some establishments support high-performing college students,” she says.
The human component
Language shapes the methods its customers view the world, in accordance with Honeycutt. “I’m considering how language can constrain thought,” she says. Language mastery can be a helpful software 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 permits them to successfully talk what they’re pondering.”
Having phrases for feelings might help folks course of them, Honeycutt believes. That is vital in areas like translation and psychology, the place nuance could be vital. 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 stable educational basis centered on cognition, language, and AI in place, Honeycutt plans to pursue research in regulation and coverage after commencement. Which means regulation faculty and public coverage packages, maybe at an establishment that gives a twin diploma observe.
“I need to prolong 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.” Training, Honeycutt says, “is a enjoyable drawback to attempt to resolve.” She needs 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 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 points of linguistics, she will proceed investigating language, its utilization, and impacts on folks and their lives. We are able to’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 surrender on attempting to unravel these issues.”
