In 2011, I was applying to Stanford for Ph.D. (I didn't get in, and eventually had a bad experience starting at KAIST in Korea). At the time, I was living in Va

In 2011, I was applying to Stanford for Ph.D. (I didn't get in, and eventually had a bad experience starting at KAIST in Korea). At the time, I was living in Vancouver, and I took a couple of weeks to visit friends from exchange programme in California, and briefly passed Stanford. I emailed a couple of professors to try to meet (and maybe get a foot in the door...). Héctor very kindly replied to my email! He also invited me to the InfoLab lunch, which was about MOOCs that day. He was very friendly and knowledgable, and even though I was but fresh out of university in the UK, he welcomed me warmly, humbly listened to some of my crazy ideas about data management, and encouraged me to pursue serious research. It's sad to read of his passing. I'm grateful that he's well-known enough to be memorialised here on Hacker News; he deserves the recognition.