Faith Baca ’25 finds her passion in linguistics and AI
By Mark Sullivan
Faith Baca ’25, double-majoring in linguistics and mathematics with computer science, aims to put AI to work for people who are marginalized in society.
“AI is a powerful tool that has left underserved communities without representation, and I want to change this,” says the senior from Denver, Colorado, a recipient of the Ashar Aziz Mens et Manus Scholarship. Baca has designed lessons for heritage learners of the Passamaquoddy language in Maine, and helped develop automatic speech recognition for Indigenous communities in North America. She is also developing ways to conduct the Maze task, a word-by-word reading test commonly used by researchers to gauge language processing, in Spanish. Through the English for Speakers of Other Languages Program, she has taught English classes for custodial staff, which she describes as“one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences” she has had at MIT, “as well as the most fun.”