Thaindian News

Rajeev Motwani passed away on June 5. He passed away in the later part of the day reportedly in a home accident. He was 45. The Stanford professor’s funeral service arrangements have not yet been announced.

Motwani was the winner of the Godel Prize, which is a very prestigious award in the field of theoretical computer science. He was one of the youngest professors teaching at the Stanford. He taught computer science in the college. Even till the last quarter he continued with his passion, teaching. His love for teaching and technology is widely known in his circle. Motwani was known for advising Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and PayPal in their start up endeavors. Before his involvement with Google, Motwani launched the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS). MIDAS is an umbrella organization for a number of companies that help format innovative new data management concepts.

Motwani’s contribution to academics has been in the form of such books as “Randomized Algorithms”.He had also produced a wide number of technology patents. Motwani had an avid interest in data privacy, web search, robotics, computational drug design and theoretical computer science. He has won numerous awards for his contributions in various fields. Prominent among them are the Okawa Foundation Research Award and the Arthur Sloan Research Fellowship.

Rajeev Motwani was a strong unbinding force behind many start up companies and provided valuable advice in matters of investment. He had been on the board of Google, Mimosa Systems, Baynote, Vuclip, Adchemy and Stanford Student Enterprises and a host of other big names.