Are you proud to be associated with a TV that inspired lots of young people to do a science career?

Inexpressibly proud. I put that at the very top of my list, and certainly young women. I�ve had enough letters and I�ve had enough engagement with them to assure you that that has been the case, and I find that not only humbling, but a very profound warning regarding the power and the legacy of Hollywood. This small pool of entertainment can influence and reverberate both socio-economically and culturally on the profoundest level.

I�ve had young women come to me and say that before they watched Voyager it didn�t really occur to them that they could be successful in a higher position in the field of science; girls going to MIT, girls pursuing astrophysics with a view to a career in NASA.

I�m very fond of telling this story because this was my great eye-opener - in the first season I was invited to the White House, women in science were being celebrated and the First Lady was going to speak and I was asked to speak at the Kennedy Center.

I found the whole day so moving at the White House. These women were the heads at NASA, chiefs, engineering, astrophysics, as I mentioned. The First Lady spoke eloquently and deeply on this subject of science, and that night after I had spoken, at the Kennedy Center I was asked to meet a group of young women from MIT who were the most celebrated in their graduating class, and one of them approached me and she said, "I�m speaking on behalf of my colleagues and myself when I say to you that it was Voyager that turned me around. Both of my parents are scientists, my father in a stellar role, my mother in a less important one, and it was my feeling that I would get into the field of research because that was most accommodating to women. And then I met Captain Janeway, and I said to myself, "She can do it, I can do it."