Remembering Gene

We are very sorry to report that Gene Golovchinsky passed away on August 15, 2013 at Stanford Hospital.

He had overcome cancer twice in the last five years and appeared to be in good health. Struggling with what he thought was altitude sickness from a trip to Salt Lake City, he checked in with his doctors who immediately transferred him to Stanford Hospital where he was diagnosed with acute leukemia. His wife Jill and son Theo had been visiting family on the East Coast, but when she heard the news, Jill flew back immediately. Gene and Jill were able to visit briefly in the hospital. Sadly, Gene had a stroke early in the morning of August 14 and passed away peacefully the next day without regaining consciousness.

Gene was a distinguished research scientist, a loving father and husband, and a dear friend to many. He worked at the FX Palo Alto Laboratory as a senior scientist for 17 years. During that time, he led research projects on usable conference rooms, whiteboard capture and retrieval, collaborative data collection systems, web services platforms for mobile computing, distributed annotation systems, and freeform digital ink annotation for tablet computers. One of his last projects focused on complex collaborative information seeking needs such as those that occur during e-discovery, academic research, intelligence analysis, etc.

Gene was passionate about his work. Once he started a project, he would not quit until he achieved success, and even then would want to do more. Gene was active and well respected in the academic community as well as within Fuji Xerox. Gene's hard work led to a number of top quality research papers and commercial products.

Gene received his education at the University of California at Los Angeles with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and did graduate research at the University of Toronto, earning a Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering.

Gene was an accomplished photographer, he was active on Twitter. He received several awards for his professional work.

Gene had a great sense of humor and quick wit. His taste and judgement in technology, art, culture and even wine and food were admired by many.

We are planning a celebration of his life on Saturday, September 7. Please contact Gene’s friends Bob Dreyer, Manny Noik, or John Doherty if you would like to help with this event.

Lastly, in lieu of flowers, donations in Gene's memory can be made to Operation Homefront, Gene's favorite charity at the time of his death.