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.”
As of late, 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, expertise, and social group interplay and affect.
Honeycutt’s curiosity in language and the methods it will possibly form how we predict and stay 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 buddy’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 numerous as neurology, massive 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 wished to review 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 study cool issues like how the mind ‘does’ language.”
An MIT method to review
Honeycutt selected MIT, partly, 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 want to pursue the sort 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 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 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 expertise with a data-driven method to language examine and processing. “Majoring in linguistics highlighted the facility of scientific rigor to arrange and analyze an enormous quantity of chaotic, human-centric information,” she says. Her coursework bolstered the worth of her determination.
Honeycutt lauds the liberty MIT’s deal with interdisciplinary examine gives. “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 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 encompasses a deal with language acquisition, training coverage, LLMs’ computational potentialities 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 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 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 different approaches to the model of linguistics provided at MIT. “MIT’s method to linguistics facilities phrases and approaches its examine like a math drawback, whereas sociolinguistics consists of essential 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 neighborhood. “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 a wide range of educational backgrounds. She performs girls’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 residing 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 among the training concepts being developed in her coursework. “I need to assist underperforming college students in the identical approach some establishments assist high-performing college students,” she says.
The human component
Language shapes the methods its customers view the world, in accordance with Honeycutt. “I’m focused on how language can constrain thought,” she says. Language mastery can also be a helpful software in gauging emotional intelligence. “It’s essential that individuals 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 will help folks course of them, Honeycutt believes. That is essential in areas like translation and psychology, the place nuance might 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 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 legislation and coverage after commencement. Meaning legislation faculty and public coverage packages, maybe at an establishment that gives a twin diploma monitor.
“I need to lengthen alternatives to underserved college students,” she says. “Issues in coverage areas are troublesome, partly, as a result of they defy straightforward categorization and contain a number of stakeholders.” Training, Honeycutt says, “is a enjoyable drawback to attempt to clear up.” She needs to assist efforts to enact lasting change by enhancing literacy, guaranteeing 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 subject 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 are able to’t clear up training challenges, enhance AI and entry to AI-enabled instruments, and additional the examine of linguistics with out institutional and neighborhood assist.
“Help analysis,” Honeycutt says. “Don’t surrender on making an attempt to unravel these issues.”