Rajeev Motwani
Encyclopedia
Rajeev Motwani was a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
whose research focused on theoretical computer science
. He was an early advisor and supporter of companies including Google
and PayPal
, and a special advisor to Sequoia Capital
. He was a winner of the Gödel Prize
in 2001.
to a Hindu
Sindhi
family. He grew up in New Delhi
. His father was in the Indian Army
. He has two brothers. As a child, inspired by luminaries like Gauss
, he wanted to become a mathematician
.
Motwani went to St Columba's School, New Delhi. He completed his B.Tech in Computer Science
from IIT Kanpur in 1983 and got his Ph.D.
in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley in 1988 under the supervision of Richard Karp
.
and Sergey Brin
, and Terry Winograd
) of an influential early paper on the PageRank
algorithm
, the basis for Google's search techniques. He also co-authored another seminal search paper What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket with those same authors.
He was also an author of two widely-used theoretical computer science textbooks, Randomized Algorithms (Cambridge University Press 1995, ISBN 978-0521474658, with Prabhakar Raghavan) and Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation
(2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, 2000, with John Hopcroft
and Jeffrey Ullman
).
Prior to his involvement with Google, Motwani founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), an umbrella organization for several groups looking into new and innovative data management concepts. His research included data privacy
, web search, robotics
, and computational drug design.
He was an avid angel investor
and had funded a number of successful startups to emerge from Stanford. He sat on the boards of Google, Kaboodle, Mimosa Systems, Adchemy, Baynote
, Vuclip
, NeoPath Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems
in 2007), Tapulous
and Stanford Student Enterprises among others. He was also active in the Business Association of Stanford Entrepeneurial Students (BASES).
He was a winner of the Gödel Prize
in 2001 for his work on the PCP theorem
and its applications to hardness of approximation
.
He served on the editorial boards of SIAM Journal on Computing
, Journal of Computer and System Sciences, ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data, and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.
home on June 5, 2009. The San Mateo County coroner, Robert Foucrault, ruled the death an accidental drowning. Toxicology tests also revealed that he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.26 percent, more than three times the level considered drunken driving in California. He could not swim, but was planning on taking lessons, according to his friends.
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
whose research focused on theoretical computer science
Theoretical computer science
Theoretical computer science is a division or subset of general computer science and mathematics which focuses on more abstract or mathematical aspects of computing....
. He was an early advisor and supporter of companies including Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
, and a special advisor to Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...
. He was a winner of the Gödel Prize
Gödel Prize
The Gödel Prize is a prize for outstanding papers in theoretical computer science, named after Kurt Gödel and awarded jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory .The...
in 2001.
Early life
Rajeev Motwani was born in JammuJammu (city)
Jammu is the largest city in the Jammu region and the winter capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It is a municipal corporation.It is close to Sialkot in Pakistan...
to a Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
Sindhi
Sindhi people
Sindhis are a Sindhi speaking socio-ethnic group of people originating from Sindh, a province Formerly of British India, now in Pakistan. Today Sindhis that live in Pakistan belong to various religious denominations including Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity...
family. He grew up in New Delhi
New Delhi
New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
. His father was in the Indian Army
Indian Army
The Indian Army is the land based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. With about 1,100,000 soldiers in active service and about 1,150,000 reserve troops, the Indian Army is the world's largest standing volunteer army...
. He has two brothers. As a child, inspired by luminaries like Gauss
Gauss
Gauss may refer to:*Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician and physicist*Gauss , a unit of magnetic flux density or magnetic induction*GAUSS , a software package*Gauss , a crater on the moon...
, he wanted to become a mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
.
Motwani went to St Columba's School, New Delhi. He completed his B.Tech in Computer Science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
from IIT Kanpur in 1983 and got his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley in 1988 under the supervision of Richard Karp
Richard Karp
Richard Manning Karp is a computer scientist and computational theorist at the University of California, Berkeley, notable for research in the theory of algorithms, for which he received a Turing Award in 1985, The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science in 2004, and the Kyoto...
.
Career
Motwani joined Stanford soon after U.C. Berkeley. Motwani was one of the co-authors (with Larry PageLarry Page
Lawrence "Larry" Page is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. As of April 4, 2011, he is also the chief executive of Google, as announced on January 20, 2011...
and Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....
, and Terry Winograd
Terry Winograd
Terry Allen Winograd is an American professor of computer science at Stanford University, and co-director of the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group...
) of an influential early paper on the PageRank
PageRank
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by the Google Internet search engine, that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set...
algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
, the basis for Google's search techniques. He also co-authored another seminal search paper What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket with those same authors.
He was also an author of two widely-used theoretical computer science textbooks, Randomized Algorithms (Cambridge University Press 1995, ISBN 978-0521474658, with Prabhakar Raghavan) and Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation
Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation
Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation, is an influential computer science textbook by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman on formal languages and the theory of computation.- Nickname :...
(2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, 2000, with John Hopcroft
John Hopcroft
John Edward Hopcroft is an American theoretical computer scientist. His textbooks on theory of computation and data structures are regarded as standards in their fields. He is the IBM Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics in Computer Science at Cornell University.He received his...
and Jeffrey Ullman
Jeffrey Ullman
Jeffrey David Ullman is a renowned computer scientist. His textbooks on compilers , theory of computation , data structures, and databases are regarded as standards in their fields.-Early life & Career:Ullman received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering...
).
Prior to his involvement with Google, Motwani founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), an umbrella organization for several groups looking into new and innovative data management concepts. His research included data privacy
Data privacy
Information privacy, or data privacy is the relationship between collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them....
, web search, robotics
Robotics
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...
, and computational drug design.
He was an avid angel investor
Angel investor
An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...
and had funded a number of successful startups to emerge from Stanford. He sat on the boards of Google, Kaboodle, Mimosa Systems, Adchemy, Baynote
Baynote
Baynote is a Cupertino, California-based software company offering web search recommendation software as a service products. It is based on the concept of the wisdom of the crowd , in which search results are ranked based on analysis of the links and pages visited by users in the past....
, Vuclip
Vuclip
Vuclip is a mobile video company that allows users to search for and watch web videos on any video-enabled mobile device. According to data from Opera, it is one of the top 30 mobile sites globally and one of the top ten mobile sites in India....
, NeoPath Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
in 2007), Tapulous
Tapulous
Tapulous, Inc. is an American software and video game developer and publisher headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company as part of the Disney Interactive Media Group...
and Stanford Student Enterprises among others. He was also active in the Business Association of Stanford Entrepeneurial Students (BASES).
He was a winner of the Gödel Prize
Gödel Prize
The Gödel Prize is a prize for outstanding papers in theoretical computer science, named after Kurt Gödel and awarded jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory .The...
in 2001 for his work on the PCP theorem
PCP theorem
In computational complexity theory, the PCP theorem states that every decision problem in the NP complexity class has probabilistically checkable proofs of constant query complexity and logarithmic randomness complexity .The PCP theorem says that for some universal constant K, for every...
and its applications to hardness of approximation
Hardness of approximation
In computer science, hardness of approximation is a field that studies the algorithmic complexity of finding near-optimal solutions to optimization problems. It complements the study of approximation algorithms by proving, for certain problems, a limit on the factors with which their solution can...
.
He served on the editorial boards of SIAM Journal on Computing
SIAM Journal on Computing
The SIAM Journal on Computing is a scientific journal focusing on the mathematical and formal aspects of computer science. It is published by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics . As of September 2008, Éva Tardos serves as editor-in-chief.-External links:** on DBLP...
, Journal of Computer and System Sciences, ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data, and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.
Death
Motwani was found dead in his pool in the backyard of his AthertonAtherton, California
Atherton is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States. Its population was 6,914 at the 2010 census. In September 2010, Forbes magazine placed Atherton's zip code of 94027 at #2 on its annual list of America's most expensive zip codes, with a median home price of $4,010,200...
home on June 5, 2009. The San Mateo County coroner, Robert Foucrault, ruled the death an accidental drowning. Toxicology tests also revealed that he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.26 percent, more than three times the level considered drunken driving in California. He could not swim, but was planning on taking lessons, according to his friends.
Awards
- Gödel PrizeGödel PrizeThe Gödel Prize is a prize for outstanding papers in theoretical computer science, named after Kurt Gödel and awarded jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory .The...
- OkawaIsao Okawawas a Japanese businessman and the former Chairman of Sega.-History:Okawa was born in Osaka, Japan. As a young adult he studied at Waseda University in Tokyo. After graduating from Waseda he formed his own Computer Service Company, which later became known as CSK Holdings Corporation .-Involvement...
Foundation Research Award - Arthur Sloan Research Fellowship
- National Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation
- Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Kanpur
- Bergmann Memorial Award from the US-Israel Bi-National Science Foundation
- IBM Faculty Award
External links
- Faculty homepage
- DBLP: Rajeev Motwani
- Mathematician at heart
- Professor Rajeev Motwani at The TelegraphThe Daily TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...