Michael Rampino is a Professor of Biology at New York University and a Research Consultant at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His research spans many areas of the earth sciences, especially the inter-relationships between the Earth's changing environments and the evolution of life. A major long-term project involves the causes of mass extinctions, including the end-Cretaceous extinction 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs and many other forms of life died out. Another line of ongoing research has been an investigation of the role of volcanic eruptions in climatic change. Recent projects include computer modeling of biogeochemical cycles (carried out with Ken Caldeira at Lawrence - Livermore National Laboratory), and studies of global climate on time scales from decades (global warming) to hundreds of million of years (Snowball Earth) carried out with colleagues at NASA, Goddard Institute for Space Studies in NYC.