Born in
Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, García-Molina graduated in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the
Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies (ITESM) and received both a master's degree in Electrical Engineering (1975) and a doctorate in Computer Science (1979) from
Stanford University. From 1979 to 1991, García-Molina worked as a professor of the Computer Science Department at
Princeton University in
New Jersey. In 1992 he joined the faculty of
Stanford University as the Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and has served as Director of the Computer Systems Laboratory (August 1994 – December 1997) and as chairman of the Computer Science Department from (January 2001 – December 2004). the project from which the
Google search engine emerged. García-Molina served at the
U.S. President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and was a member of
Oracle Corporation's Board of Directors beginning in October 2001 until his death. García-Molina was also a Fellow member of the
Association for Computing Machinery, the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the
National Academy of Engineering. He was a Venture Advisor for Diamondhead Ventures and ONSET Ventures. In 1999 he was laureated with the
ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award. ==Awards==