Tyler Volk is Emeritus Professor of Biology & Environmental Studies at New York University, and a recipient of the University's Distinguished Teaching Award and Golden Dozen Award. His teaching activities at NYU have included a core curriculum science course, annually for many years, "Lessons from the Biosphere," smaller lecture and seminar courses in biology and environmental studies, a freshman honors seminar, an advanced honors seminar called "Metapatterns: From Quarks to Culture," and graduate courses in biology and earth systems science. He is the author of Metapatterns Across Space, Time, and Mind; Gaia's Body: Toward a Physiology of Earth; CO2 Rising: The Earth's Greatest Environmental Challenge; and the death-half of a co-authored book Death and Sex, which examines the intertwining of life and death from bacteria to human psychology. He plays lead guitar for The Amygdaloids.