I co-founded Duolingo with the mission of bringing free language education to the world.

Together with my advisor, Manuel Blum, I co-invented CAPTCHAs, or computer-generated tests that humans are routinely able to pass but that computers have not mastered (they are the squiggly computer letters that are prevalent across the web).

I am an early riser, and always wake up between 5 and 6am.

The current business model for language education is the student pays — in particular, the student pays Rosetta Stone $500. The problem with this business model is that 95 percent of the world’s population doesn’t have $500.

In 2011, after spending a couple of years working at Google, I decided that I wanted to dedicate myself to helping to transform education. I was particularly inspired by my upbringing in Guatemala, a poor country where high-quality educational opportunities are limited to those who have money.

The question that motivates my research is, if we can put a man on the Moon with 100,000 [people], what can we do with 100 million?

It's hard to think of a time when I'm not working, but when that is the case, I like to travel and eat good food.