#DesignIndaba2017: Luis von Ahn announced as speaker
“I build systems that combine humans and computers to solve large-scale problems that neither can solve alone. I call this ‘human computation’, but others sometimes call it ‘crowdsourcing’,” says Von Ahn, who is considered one of the pioneers in the latter.
Von Ahn is an associate computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where in 2008 he launched a new course titled ‘Science of the Web’, which combines graph theory and social science.
He has been named one of the 10 Most Brilliant Scientists by Popular Science Magazine, one of the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover, one of the Top Young Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, and one of the 100 Most Innovative People in Business by Fast Company Magazine.
He's currently the CEO of Duolingo, a language-learning platform developed to bring free language education to the world, whereby you can learn Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, and many other languages for free on Android or iOS devices. With over 150 million users, it’s now the most popular platform of its kind and the most downloaded app in the education category globally on both iTunes and Google Play. It was named Apple's iPhone App of the Year and Google Play's Best of the Best in 2013 and 2014.
For a taste of what’s to come, listen to his TED Talk on Massive-scale online collaboration, in which he shares more about how he’s using small contributions by many on the Internet for greater good.
For his speaker profile, go to DesignIndaba.com. To find out more, you can watch his NOVA special, read his Wikipedia page, watch his talk at the Library of Congress, watch his Google Tech Talk, or read his Wired feature. Here are some of his papers. Follow him on Twitter @LuisvonAhn.
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