Rajeev Motwani, a Stanford professor who mentored the founders of Google and also backed up Paypal, was found dead in his swimming pool. Like a lot of desis, Motwani did not know how to swim and may have accidentally drowned in his own pool, say sources. He was only 47. [CNET]
Motwani was born in Jammu, India and followed the ultimate desi grad student route to U.C.Berkeley via IIT Kanpur. His research spanned a veritable list of computer buzz words:
His research spanned a diverse set of areas in computer science, including databases, data mining, and data privacy; Web search and information retrieval; robotics; computational drug design; and theoretical computer science.
His death prompted an outpouring of condolences from the tech community. Among those paying tribute was Google founder Sergey Brin. [Brin's blog]
A few choice quotes from Brin:
Officially, Rajeev was not my advisor, and yet he played just as big a role in my research, education, and professional development.
Eventually, as Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since.
This one pretty much describes Motwani’s contributions.
Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.
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