Ripples of a Remarkable Life Lost Too Soon

What the world—and our community—lost in Adrian Albert’s death and what we gained from his life

Some of us gasped, others closed our eyes. Tears emerged, and then we all stared at our video conference screens in disbelief. How could the words that Ilan had just uttered—that Adrian was dead—be true? This friend to all, this generous and budding leader, a brilliant scientist and engineer who we were so lucky to work with as part of Cohort 2018, was a hive of energy and ideas and movement. It just didn’t compute.

But it was true. On June 5, 2020, while out for a bike ride in Sonoma County, Adrian Albert, 35, was killed by a vehicle. The driver fled the scene and the Calif. Highway Patrol is investigating the case. [Update: The driver was later found and received a three-year prison sentence.]

Reeling from this unthinkable loss, we joined with his co-fellows and many of Adrian’s other colleagues and friends via video conference—not the way we wanted to grieve and share stories, but the only way we could, given the pandemic. It was clear that Adrian’s adventurous spirit, kindness, curiosity, and intellect made an indelible impression on everyone, whether they were coworkers, close friends, or acquaintances. And one benefit of the virtual format is that his older sister and only sibling, Alexandra Albert, was able to join the call from their native Romania to share in memories and sorrow.

Adrian was at the half-way point of his two-year fellowship and had launched Terrafuse, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to provide actionable climate intelligence, including prediction of extreme climate events.

He rose early every day and cherished being outdoors, cramming time in the mountains and on his bike around long hours working doggedly to gain traction with Terrafuse. He was succeeding, too, having recently closed a round of funding.

Adrian made a huge impression on the many colleagues and friends from Berkeley Lab, Stanford, and beyond, who join us in mourning his death. “Adrian was one of the smartest, most creative and yet very humble scientists I have ever seen,” said Ravi Prasher, associate lab director, Energy Technology Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“It is a tremendous loss to the scientific and technological community. It is with a heavy heart that I extend my deepest condolences to Adrian's family, friends, colleagues.”

Boy Wonder 

Adrian was born in Iasi, Romania in 1984. In addition to his sister, he is survived by his parents and maternal grandmother. “We spent every summer vacation at the house of our maternal grandparents, in the countryside,” Alexandra Albert said. “We used to have two tables outside under a cherry tree. He would study physics; myself, some foreign language. During one family vacation to the seaside I remember him bringing his physics book—it had more than 1,000 pages.”

He left Romania to study physics and computational science at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, and then earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford before a stint at predictive analytics firm C3 IoT, and then postdoctoral work at both SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and  the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he researched machine and deep learning methods for satellite imagery and sensor time-series data for energy, mobility, and infrastructure utilization. 

But Adrian did not talk much about his work or accomplishments during calls and visits home to Romania. ”He was always inquiring about our health, our lives, our problems,” his sister recalls. “It was maybe a way for him to just take a break from his own busy life.”

Propelled to Act, and Learn

When it came to his work, Adrian clearly felt the clock ticking. He wanted Terrafuse to be put to use and seemed especially driven by society's narrowing window to avoid the most catastrophic impacts from climate change. By combining machine learning with weather and climate data the Terrafuse platform generates information that insurers, cities, and even consumers can use to accurately measure and reduce risks made more acute by climate change, such as the risks of wildfire.

During onboarding to his fellowship at Cyclotron Road, he was asked for one word to describe himself. Adrian said “persistent.” He had a voracious appetite to turn his research into a tool to slow climate change, and his chosen route to that goal was to learn the ropes of entrepreneurship. But he could not have been less like the Silicon Valley image of an ego-driven, self-referential founder. Adrian always looked like he was either about to go on a hike or had just finished one. A flannel and jeans served as his daily uniform. But more importantly, he was remarkably generous and open, sharing what he was learning with other fellows at Cyclotron Road as often as he asked for their counsel.

It seemed like standing up Terrafuse and making it successful was the defining intellectual challenge of Adrian’s still-young life. It was his laser focus, but it required learning how to be entrepreneurial—a new skill set that sometimes appeared to perplex him more than the tremendous complexity of his technical work. And that made us on the program team feel even more driven to help him.After his death, we heard from Adrian’s advisor at Stanford, who described him as a consummate academic intellectual but also someone who was really eager to translate his work into impact outside academia. And we talked to seed investors in Terrafuse, who were compelled by Adrian’s conviction to step up to take early bets on the company.

What was so hard and yet so touching in this moment of loss was that both those groups, with such different interests, dropped everything and sat with us to reflect on, celebrate, and mourn the loss of what Adrian was capable as a person, a vector for positive change. No one talked about any of his intellectual ideas or products or anything like that. It was about the power of him.

A Rich Life and Lasting Spirit

Adrian’s life wasn’t a binary of work and outdoor pursuits, though. He enjoyed spending time with friends, sharing food—often Romanian fare that he made—and stories. He loved baked goods and having work meetings in cafes, but would only work in cafes with pastries that passed his high bar for quality. He wasn’t just keen on adventure, he thrived on spontaneity. “Back in 2018 we decided to go for what was supposed to be a short hike,” remembered his friend Dzhelil Rufat. But one thing led to another and the little hike ended on the summit of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States.

Adrian embodied the qualities that make our fellows such compelling people: a mix of genius and humility that attracts and inspires others to join them in a shared vision of making a positive impact. Adrian was intentional. And he made it seem like doing really hard things wasn’t actually that hard. Ambition may have propelled him, but ethics guided and governed his actions. And that’s part of his legacy. He could have taken so many different—and likely far, far more lucrative—paths. But he dedicated himself to building Terrafuse, and in the process he committed himself to our community.

We will be telling stories about Adrian and his vision and his always tousled hair and his long work hours and epic hikes for years to come and in that way his spirit will remain part of the lore and the promise of what we’re doing as an organization. It will reverberate and hopefully we will see it emerge in the fellows we support in the future.

Ilan put it simply but eloquently: "Adrian was a singularity of talent, determination, and spirit. Our loss is infinite.”

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An Eastern Orthodox Christian, Adrian was deeply spiritual and prayerful. Adding to the family’s pain is the inability, given the pandemic, of traveling to the U.S. to retrieve his body. Funds raised in this GoFundMe campaign will cover expenses to return Adrian to Romania for a funeral and burial, and will also cover legal fees related to the investigation. (An update on the legal case.)