Rajeev Motwani, noted Stanford professor and Google founders' adviser, dead at 45 - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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The professor was found dead in hisswimmint pool, an apparent drowning the morning after a party to celebrate the end of the schookl year with students and colleagues. Motwanu founded the Mining Data at Stanfordprojecr (MIDAS), which helped develop innovative data management He is best known for advisingf Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page whils they were studying at Stanforcd and later as they founded the Mountain View search Brin wrote a tribute to his mentor "Of all the facultyg at Stanford, it is with Rajeevc that I have stayedc the closest and I will miss him dearly.
Yet his legacy and personality lives on inthe students, and companies he has Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a littlee bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it" Dave Hornik of in Menllo Park, where Motwani regularly attenderd Monday partners meetings, : "For those of you who didn't know you might get the impression that he was your typicalk Silicon Valley insider -- loud, brash, full of bravado. He was anything but. Rajeev was soft spoken and gentle. He was self-confident but didn'tg feel the need to provw anything. He didn't speak to hear his own And he didn't need to be the center of Rajeev just wanted tobe helpful. And he was.
To so many of Silicon Valley Angel investor Ron Conway said in a videlothat "The entrepreneurs in Silicobn Valley that he has influenced and helped and mentorex is in the hundreds. He shared my attitude that the more entrepreneura youcan help, even if you only give them five go do it. He nevere refused a meeting with an entrepreneutr that I suggested he meet just to give them somequickk advice." A native of New Delhi, Motwanio got his bachelor’s degreew in computer science from IIT Kanpur in 1983 and his doctoratee from UC Berkeley in 1988.