In Memory of Dr. Andras Farago

After an unexpected and very brief battle with pancreatic cancer, our beloved dad passed away on Sunday, January 21st. We plan to establish a scholarship honoring him and appreciate contributions.

Dr. Andras Farago was known by some as “Papi (daddy),” “Medve/Maci (bear),” “Nagypapi (granddaddy),” “Andras,” and “Dr. Farago”. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1952, into a Jewish family of Holocaust survivors. Andras earned a PhD in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Budapest in 1981 and worked there as a professor for many years. In 1998, he joined the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) computer science department and resettled his family to the US. Andras was teaching and researching until the end of the fall 2023 semester, when his diagnosis surfaced.

Andras loved to travel, try various cuisines from across the world, listen to smooth jazz, play chess, go on walks, and spend time with his family (most recently, with his grandbaby, Georgie or Gyuri, named after his own father). Andras was an avid reader, a sharp theoretician and productive researcher, a doting and loving father and husband, and a gentle soul with a keen sense of humor and wit. He was an independent thinker and problem solver his entire life, even in hospice, where he defied all expectations of life expectancy and left us much too soon.

Andras’ dark humor didn’t fail him in the midst of his brief struggle with pancreatic cancer. He called himself “Mr. Goner” from the initial diagnosis and joked that he may or may not live to see the next U.S. presidential election. He was officially diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive form of pancreatic cancer called acinar cell carcinoma in December, so his predictions tragically turned out to be true.

He will be terribly missed by his family, friends, colleagues, and students.

He is survived by Mrs. Farago Gyorgy (mother), Andrea Farago (sister), Zsuzsanna Garai (wife), Fanni Farago (daughter) & partner Fernando Tapia, Flora Farago (daughter) & partner Jim Edmonds, and Peter Farago (son). His spirit and jokes will live on in our hearts and his legacy will continue via his grandson, Georgie (Gyorgy) Farago Edmonds, his family, and his prolific research on algorithms, wireless networks, and other complex topics in computer science. He was preceded in death by Gyorgy Farago (father).

The family requests that jokes, stories, delicious food, music, and smiles be shared in his honor.