The SIGMOD Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award

I was reading my Google Reader RSS today and found this:

"SIGMOD has established the annual SIGMOD Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award to recognize excellent research by doctoral candidates in the database field. Until 2008, this award was known as the "SIGMOD Doctoral Dissertation Award." In 2008, SIGMOD, with the unanimous approval of ACM Council, decided to rename the award to honor Dr. Jim Gray. SIGMOD Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award winners and runners-up will be recognized at the SIGMOD conference, and their dissertations will be included in the SIGMOD DiSC and on the SIGMOD Online web site. The award winner will also receive a plaque and present his or her work together with the winners of the SIGMOD Innovations and Test of Time awards."

This reminded me of this respectable person, Jim Gray, who is from Microsoft Research but has gone missing at the sea since early last year. People have still been looking for him, but there is no good news yet. That was really sad. What made me sadder was that not until today did I realize that he also helped in the development of Virtual Earth, which is an advanced online geomapping service to help us locate ourselves, and I am using it right now! Suddenly I feel like he was not a Turing winner far away in CA, but a person who was so close to me! Can't believe something so great in my life, but one of its inventors can no longer enjoy it with us.

I do not know if I have a chance to win this award since it is not exactly my field. But I am very encouaged that it is renamed under him. Because of his efforts, we will never get missing in future.