- Luis von Ahn
Infobox_Scientist
name = Luis von Ahn
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birth_date =
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residence =United States
work_institution =Carnegie Mellon University
alma_mater =Carnegie Mellon University Duke University
doctoral_advisor =Manuel Blum Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the
Computer Science Department atCarnegie Mellon University , where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005 under the supervision ofManuel Blum . Previously, von Ahn obtained a B.S. in mathematics fromDuke University in 2000. He is the recipient of aMicrosoft Research Fellowship, and became aMacArthur Fellow (a.k.a., the "genius award") in 2006. [ [http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.2070789/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id={7D985462-610A-445A-B44A-6238715F94BC}¬oc=1 MacArthur Fellows profile] ] His research includesCAPTCHA s andHuman-based computation . He was born inGuatemala City ,Guatemala and studied at the American School of Guatemala.Von Ahn's early work was in the field of cryptography. With Nick Hopper and John Langford, he was the first to provide rigorous definitions of
steganography and to prove that private-keysteganography is possible. He has also worked with the cryptographerJosh Benaloh .In 2000, he did early work in CAPTCHA, a computer-generated test that humans can pass but computers cannot. The device is used by websites to prevent bots from automatically registering large numbers of accounts. The CAPTCHA brought Luis his first widespread fame among the general public due to its coverage in "
The New York Times ", "USA Today ",Discovery Channel , and other mainstream outlets.His Ph.D. thesis, completed in 2005, was the first treatise recognizing the importance of human-based computation within computation generally. It is also the first work on
Games with a Purpose , which are games played by humans that produce useful computation as a side-effect. The most famous example is theESP Game , a game in which two people are simultaneously given an image of the same picture, with no way to communicate. Each then lists a number of words/phrases that describe the picture within a time limit, and are rewarded with points for a match. This match turns out to be an accurate description of the picture, and can be successfully employed in a database for more accurate image search technology. The ESP Game has been licensed by Google in the form of theGoogle Image Labeler , and is used to improve the accuracy of theGoogle Image Search .OfficialGoogle Blog, " [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/congratulations-luis-von-ahn.html Congratulations, Luis von Ahn] "] [ [http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/help.html About Google Image Labeler] ] Other games includePeekaboom , a game for locating objects within an image, Verbosity, a game for collecting common-sense facts about the world, and Phetch, a game for annotating web images with explanatory text. Von Ahn's games brought him more coverage in the mainstream media, as well as numerous honors including the MacArthur Fellowship, Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship, Technology Review's TR35: Young Innovators Under 35, and Popular Science Magazine's Brilliant 10. His thesis won the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science.More recently, von Ahn developed
reCAPTCHA , a new form ofCAPTCHA that also helps digitize books. In reCAPTCHA, the words displayed to the user come directly from old books that are being digitized; they are words that OCR could not identify and are sent to people throughout the Web to be identified.References
External links
* [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/ Web page at CMU]
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143 Lecture on human computation by Luis von Ahn]
* [http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/ Google Image Labeler]
* [http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.2070789/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id={7D985462-610A-445A-B44A-6238715F94BC}¬oc=1/ John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation]
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