Luis von Ahn can now be called a genius.
The Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist today became this year's youngest MacArthur Fellow and received $500,000 to spend as he sees fit.
"I was totally surprised and very happy," said von Ahn, 28, of Shadyside. "It never occurred to me that I'd win."
It's the second honor he's received in as many weeks. Popular Science magazine last week named von Ahn as one of its "Brilliant 10," an honor unrelated to the fellowship.
The fellowship -- nicknamed the "genius grant" -- recognizes people who are creative and original and who have the potential to make important contributions, said Daniel Socolow, director of the fellowship program.
The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded this year's fellowships to 25 people, including a country doctor, a jazz violinist and a deep-sea explorer.
Before his death in 1978, John MacArthur, a businessman and sole owner of the Chicago-based Bankers Life & Casualty Co., created the foundation named for him and his second wife. His son, J. Roderick MacArthur, suggested the fellowships, and they have been awarded annually since 1981.
The process is marked by secrecy. Hundreds of anonymous people, from poets to neuroscientists, are selected to nominate candidates for the fellowship. A secret committee of 12 people chooses 20 to 25 nominees to receive the fellowships.
"People don't apply for this -- you can't apply," Socolow said. "You have to be nominated."
Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., received a "phone call out of the blue" last year notifying him that he had won a fellowship. He said the money has made a big difference.
"The funding that comes from the MacArthur Foundation is extremely flexible and allows one a certain kind of freedom to pursue research directions that may be more high risk or more speculative -- things that have the potential for higher pay-off," he said.
Socolow declined to say what it was about von Ahn that caught the committee's eye. Von Ahn is working on a project called Phetch that asks people to write descriptive image captions that could make the Internet more friendly to the visually impaired.
It wasn't until midway through last week that von Ahn found out he'd won, and he has no clue who nominated him. Until today he was only allowed to tell one person, and he chose his fiancee, Laura Dabbish.
"She actually said, 'I knew it,'" von Ahn said. "She didn't really, but she said she knew I'd win."
Every three months for the next five years von Ahn will receive a check for $25,000. The money comes without any reporting requirements.
"We tell the fellows, 'We believe you know far better than we how to take care of this,'" Socolow said. "They have the responsibility to use it effectively and responsibly to move forward with their work."
Von Ahn hasn't decided how to spend it yet, but said he's kicking around the idea of starting a business. The $500,000 grant is almost four times larger than any other grant he's received.
"If it was the lottery, I'd probably use it to buy a bigger house," von Ahn said. "But I don't think that's what this is meant for."
2006 MacArthur Fellows
In addition to von Ahn, the following people were named MacArthur Fellows this year:
David Carroll, 64, of Warner, N.H., a naturalist author and illustrator
Regina Carter, 40, of New York, a jazz violinist
Kenneth Catania, 40, of Nashville, Tenn., a comparative neurobiologist at Vanderbilt University
Lisa Curran, 45, of New Haven, Conn., a tropical forester at Yale University
Kevin Eggan, 32, of Cambridge, Mass., a developmental biologist at Harvard University
James Fruchterman, 47, of Palo Alto, Calif., a technologist
Dr. Atul Gawande, 40, of Boston, a surgeon and author at the Harvard Medical School
Linda Griffith, 46, of Cambridge, Mass., a bioengineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Victoria Hale, 45, of San Francisco, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur
Adrian LeBlanc, 42, of New York, a narrative journalist
David Macaulay, 59, of Norwich, Vt., an author and illustrator
Josiah McElheny, 39, of New York, a sculptor
Dr. D. Holmes Morton, 55, of Strasburg, Pa., a country doctor
Dr. John A. Rich, 46, of Philadelphia, a physician at Drexel University
Jennifer Richeson, 34, of Evanston, Ill., a social psychologist at Northwestern University
Sarah Ruhl, 32, of New York, a playwright
George Saunders, 47, of Syracuse, N.Y., a short-story writer at Syracuse University
Anna Schuleit, 32, of New York, a commemorative artist
Shahzia Sikander, 37, of New York, a painter
Terence Tao, 31, of Los Angeles, a mathematician at UCLA
Claire Tomlin, 37, of Stanford, Calif., an aviation engineer at Stanford University
Edith Widder, 55, of Fort Pierce, Fla., a deep-sea explorer
Matias Zaldarriaga, 35, of Cambridge, Mass., a cosmologist at Harvard University
John Zorn, 53, of New York, a musician and composer
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