When she was a toddler, MIT senior Olivia Honeycutt would spend summers on her grandparents’ farm in rural Alabama outdoors 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.” 

Today, Honeycutt, a double main in computation and cognition and linguistics, nonetheless finds herself transferring between a number of worlds which can be concurrently related and distinctly totally different. Her analysis pursuits lie on the intersection of human pondering and consciousness, language studying and acquisition, know-how, and social group interplay and affect. 

Honeycutt’s curiosity in language and the methods it could possibly form how we expect and stay grew alongside lifelong investments in math and science. She discovered French from her relationships with Haitian household mates, 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 totally 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, 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 data.” She’s needed 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 seek out solutions, you get to study cool issues like how the mind ‘does’ language.”  

An MIT strategy 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 want to pursue the form of pc science work that “centered folks,” elevated the probability that she may proceed in her most well-liked areas of investigation with the help 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 resolution to main in linguistics together with computation and cognition meant she may join her pursuits in mind perform and know-how with a data-driven strategy to language research and processing. “Majoring in linguistics highlighted the ability of scientific rigor to prepare and analyze an enormous quantity of chaotic, human-centric information,” she says. Her coursework bolstered the worth of her resolution. 

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 whole lot of that work is going on at MIT,” she says. “MIT supplies 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 cause I’m on the trail I’ve chosen,” she continues, one which contains a concentrate on language acquisition, schooling coverage, LLMs’ computational prospects and limitations, and schooling 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 perform and supported analysis to help in growing laws to assist enhance literacy amongst South Africans. 

“Linguistic variety presents important 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 discovered the worth of contemplating different 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 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 girls’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 schooling concepts being developed in her coursework. “I wish to assist underperforming college students in the identical approach some establishments support high-performing college students,” she says.

The human component

Language shapes the methods its customers view the world, in line 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 essential that individuals purchase and perceive language at school,” she argues. “Folks ought to have entry to a language that permits them to successfully talk what they’re pondering.”

Having phrases for feelings may help folks course of them, Honeycutt believes. That is essential in areas like translation and psychology, the place nuance may be essential. 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 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 college and public coverage applications, maybe at an establishment that gives a twin diploma monitor.

“I wish 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.” Training, Honeycutt says, “is a enjoyable downside to attempt to resolve.” She desires to help efforts to enact lasting change by enhancing literacy, guaranteeing 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 discipline that may reply all of the questions, Honeycutt argues. By combining the science of mind perform with the social and mathematical facets of linguistics, she will be able to proceed investigating language, its utilization, and impacts on folks and their lives. We will’t resolve schooling 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 unravel these issues.”