Severin Hacker (born July 6, 1984) is a Swiss-American computer scientist who is the co-founder and CTO of Duolingo, the world's most popular language-learning platform.
"[5] He moved to Pittsburgh to study at Carnegie Mellon University where he co-founded Duolingo with Luis von Ahn in 2009.
Initially, Hacker and his former graduate advisor, Luis von Ahn, wanted to develop an application that could translate internet sites, so that they would be accessible for non-English speakers.
In 2012, a study by American universities showed that spending 34 hours of learning on Duolingo was equivalent to a full-semester of a college language course.
[9] Through Duolingo, Hacker wants users to have the option to increase their 'stay-tuned quota' which involves adjusting the learning time and difficulty of the course.