Google mentor Rajeev Motwani dies

Rajeev Motwani, the 47-year-old Indian-American computer science professor at Stanford University who mentored Google's co-founders when they were graduate students, died in a freak drowning accident at his Atherton, California home. He apparently drowned on Friday morning in a backyard swimming pool at the home he purchased three years ago, according to the San Jose Mercury News, a Silicon Valley news outlet. Friends said he did not know how to swim but was planning to take lessons.

He is survived by his wife Asha Jadeja and daughters Naitri and Anya. The family will hold a private funeral, according to the university's news agency, but a memorial service will be held at a later date. Motwani grew up in New Delhi, earned a computer science degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur in 1983, and his doctorate from the University of California-Berkeley in 1988. As a Stanford professor, he also served as the director of graduate studies for the computer science department.