From Rockstar Researcher to Selfless Mentor: A Daughter's Perspective

Abstract

Carlos Castillo-Chavez's tenure at Cornell University with Simon Levine, also marks the beginning of my life as his daughter. I was nine months old when I arrived to Ithaca, and my recollections of my father in elementary school and middle school were of him furiously writing equations at his desk, or outside on the chalk board in our shed, or on napkins, notepads or anything he could get his hands on at restaurants; but more likely than not, away. When I was young, my father was becoming the researcher that today makes him a three-time Presidential honoree, a member of Barak Obama's Presidential Committee on the National Medal of Science, and of course, the purpose of this volume. Even in those early days, he was away a lot--either traveling to conferences or increasingly as an invited lecturer, or at the office. Of course, I was still (and am) a daddy's little girl, bonded forever by a shared obsession with the same movies (The Godfather, My Name is Nobody, The Man from Snowy River); the same TV shows (Law and Order); and all things sports related, but I also knew that my father was a very busy man and his time was limited. So I would watch him work, often with my own little extra homework he would give me to keep me entertained, peck him on the check and let him know that I would take over his job when I was old enough.