Remembrance: Aalok and Ami Shah

You have our deepest condolences. Ashok Uncle was a wonderful person and we will miss him as well. He was always very welcoming, upbeat and cheerful, and we felt like we were part of the family when we were at your home.

Remembrance: Maryam Dickey

How can this happen to such a beautiful person?   I don't want to believe it... Dearest Mala, please accept my deepest sympathy and accept our condolences... Jonathan is in shock.   I just can't believe it.  So so sorry.  Much love. 

Remembrance: Prabhakar Raghavan

Words cannot describe our sadness at Ashok's passing. He was a great mentor and colleague, and many of his pithy pieces of advice still ring in my ears - in some cases almost 30 years after he uttered them (and I still tell younger colleagues the same words). Ashok may no longer be physically with us, but his legacy will surely live on with all of us who had the fortune and privilege to learn from him.

Remembrance: Veena and Rameshwar Bhargava

In the Memory of Dear Ashok

We will always remember our meetings with Ashok as he greeted with a beautiful affectionate smile. These meetings started initially as friends but soon became part of the family get together. As part of our extended family for 40 years, we all will miss him and pray to God to grant peace for his soul.

He was a brilliant individual who always wanted to understand the details of technological working or scientific principles behind any recent discoveries or breakthroughs. Our usual discussions of research topics, always triggered by his intense inquisitiveness, help me to think beyond the limits of science. His childlike curiosity was genuine for he wanted to learn every moment of his life. Learning, analyzing and understanding was his life that gave him all the joy and pleasure and he was able to spread this happiness to all his friends.  

We all will miss Ashok throughout our lives. Our love and regards to all the family members.

Remembrance: David Harel

I really have no words.  Ashok was one of a kind: a most gentle soul, friendly, modest, and low-key, yet as sharp as a needle in his thinking, and infinitely wise.  He was one of the most brilliant minds I have ever encountered (and this in a field where people think everyone is brilliant…).

A great loss to computing, and for me a great personal loss as a friend.

I am sure that his memory will stay with you forever, and that his personality and warmth will hover above your family and inspire you at all times.

I attach the photos I have, and scans of the three papers we wrote together. Although we co-authored only these three, they seem to have had great impact, which is without any doubt due to Ashok’s amazing technical abilities. I could never have done this work on my own. No way. The three papers, together, have garnered over 1500 citations, and from my personal point of view, this has been my best collaboration ever…

Remembrance: Tushar Gheewala

My deepest condolences on Ashok's untimely death. We will all miss his amazing presence, but savor his many many great memories. For me they are many from Stanford days, to IBM and Yorktown to our trips together to Panama and the hiking and tennis. I shared an album earlier today that has photos of Ashok hiking at Mt. Whitney and also to Half Dome where Ankur and you had also come.

...

Ashok was such an amazing person in so many different ways. We were all so lucky to have his presence in our lives. And while we will miss him dearly, I am sure he will be remembered lovingly for a very long time. 

--
We had so many wonderful memories with Ashok through our times together in Stanford, Yorktown and back in Bay Area. Plus hiking, tennis and travels together.  The one that sticks foremost in my mind is the time we hiked up Mt. Whitney when we were turning 50 and wanted to do something to prove that we were not quite over the hill yet.  Ashok as usual was on top of the tallest mountain in mainland us with no trouble.  I on the other hand was suffering from severe altitude sickness.  I was dizzy, disoriented, whizzing and tired. Ashok along with Reeta stayed patiently with me for over 8 hours guiding and encouraging me down a step at a time.  And even when we got to the hotel extremely tired, he took me to emergency room and stayed up with me till I felt better.  He literally saved my life that day.  And did it with his usual grace and sense of humor.

Remembrance: Bjørn Olstad

I am one of the many fortunate people that had the opportunity to work with Ashok. I was the CTO of the Norwegian company FAST that was acquired by Microsoft in 2008. I quickly connected with Ashok and we started to work together on future bets for Microsoft. There are people at work that become colleagues – and then there are a few that become friends. Ashok immediately became a friend for me. His humble appearance in spite of his extreme talent and intellect made it so easy for him to connect deeply with everyone.

In our joint work we established a Microsoft Quest. These Quests aimed at 10-year bets for the company. We focused on the move from graphical user interfaces to human interaction based interfaces and the key technology pillars to enable this transition. The Quest was called Do-As-I-Say and was by the top 300 in Microsoft rated as the best Quest. Now – 6 years later – the ideas driven by Ashok have become the foundation for the most prioritized bets at Microsoft. I later continued to work with Ashok on the Leibniz technology. I truly appreciated the friendship we established and his work on the hardest problems in computer science became an inspiration for my own work.

It has been such a privilege to know and work with Ashok. You are always welcome in Norway