Rachel H McMahan, Mashkoor A Choudhry, Juan-Pablo Idrovo, Rebecca L McCullough, Elizabeth J Kovacs
As a scientist, teacher, research mentor, and mom, I asked myself, "what is my legacy?" Legacies usually have numbers associated with them. When asked this question in the past, I summed my accomplishments in terms of who, not what. First and foremost, I have my daughter, Cathy, and then scores of spectacular lab trainees (N > 130), many of whom have contributed to the tally of "lab babies." At present, N = 79 lab babies (Cathy, of course, being lab baby #1; there is also 1 lab "grandchild"). Together, we are the "Kovacs Empire." Watching the trainees develop into clinicians/scientists/parents/etc has been among the greatest joys of my career and seeing their kids grow up is an added bonus. Of course, other numbers could be thrown into the mix. For example, I have published >300 papers and have been funded by NIH for >29 consecutive years (along with multiple local, national, other federal funding agencies) and, importantly, have helped launch the careers of many mentees from my lab and elsewhere. The "Kovacs Babies in the Empire" email list is broad and gives me an excuse to check in with the group on a relatively frequent basis. The other part of my "legacy," of course, is the money I have earned. Sorry to the lab members and readers who expect a cut of this, it all goes to Cathy.