RAJEEV MOTWANI BUILDING TO COME UP AT IIT KANPUR

MARCH 24, 2011

His wife donates $1.5 million to mark his 49th birth anniversary

The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, on Thursday announced that Asha Jadeja Motwani had made a donation of $1.5 million to mark the 49th birth anniversary of her late husband Rajeev Motwani.

The donation is for the construction of Rajeev Motwani Building within the premises to house the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and nurture entrepreneurship and innovation in the areas influenced by Rajeev’s work.

The donation also marks the beginning of collaboration between the Rajeev Motwani Foundation and IIT Kanpur to help student and faculty entrepreneurs collaborate on transforming innovative ideas and technologies into successful enterprises.

Rajeev Motwani did his B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering in 1983 from the IIT, after which he went to the University of California, Berkeley for his Ph.D, which he completed in 1988 under the supervision of Professor Richard Karp. Rajeev then joined the faculty of the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University. He passed away on June 5, 2009.

Professor Motwani made fundamental contributions in randomised algorithms, computational complexity, approximation algorithms, data mining, and mathematical modelling of the world-wide web. He was one among one of the five researchers who found the PCP theorem. It is this contribution Rajeev was awarded the prestigious Godel Prize in 2001. He was awarded the IIT-K Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2006.

Source: www.thehindu.com