Luis von Ahn

Luis von Ahn (ˈlwis fon ˈan; born 19 August 1978) is a German-Guatemalan entrepreneur and a consulting professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is known as one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing. He is the founder of the company reCAPTCHA, which was sold to Google in 2009, and the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo. Luis von Ahn was born in and grew up in Guatemala City. Von Ahn grew up in a wealthy household with both of his parents working as physicians. He is a Guatemalan of German-Jewish descent. His mother was one of the first women in Guatemala to complete medical school, and had von Ahn at age 42 despite being single. He attended the American School of Guatemala, a private English-language school in Guatemala City, an experience he cites as a great privilege. When von Ahn was eight years old, his mother bought him a Commodore 64 computer, beginning his fascination with technology and computer science. When he applied to colleges in the United States, Von Ahn had to spend more than $1,200 to fly to neighboring El Salvador to take the TOEFL. This experience left him with a negative impression of an "extractive" testing industry, ripe for disruption. At age 18, von Ahn began studying at Duke University, where he received a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Mathematics, summa cum laude, in 2000. He later earned his PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. In 2006, Von Ahn became a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. Von Ahn's early research was in the field of cryptography. With Nicholas J. Hopper and John Langford, he was the first to provide rigorous definitions of steganography and to prove that private-key steganography is possible. In 2000, he did early pioneering work with Manuel Blum on CAPTCHAs, computer-generated tests that humans are routinely able to pass but that computers have not yet mastered.