It is with great sadness that I tell you we lost our beloved Revs Director Cliff Nass this past weekend. Cliff was taking some much needed R&R in the Sierras this weekend when he suffered a sudden heart attack and died. He was 55.
Cliff's work and influence went well beyond his role as Director of Revs. Cliff was the Thomas M. Storke Professor at Stanford University, with appointments in communication; computer science; education; law; science, technology, and society; sociology, and symbolic systems. He directed the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab and was the co-Director of our sibling, the CARS (Center for Automotive Research at Stanford) Program at Stanford. Stanford's internal news published a piece this morning (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/november/cliff-nass-obit-110413.html), which goes some way toward highlighting Cliff's accomplishments.
Of course, Cliff's impact was far greater than his CV. As the news trickled in over the past day, students and alumni showed an outpouring of emotion for their teacher across various social networks. You can see constant mentions of 'genius,' 'my favorite,' 'enthusiasm,' 'he changed the way I thought,' and more across hundreds of remembrances.
Cliff's friends at the Communication department are collecting remembrances of him on their site. If you have something about Cliff you'd like to share, please visit http://comm.stanford.edu/memories-of-clifford-nass/ and submit a note. His colleagues, family and friends would appreciate hearing from you.
We already miss him and plan on carrying on Cliff's call to 'move the automobile to the center of the university.'
Thank you,
Reilly P. Brennan
Executive Director, Revs Program at Stanford
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