Douglas Zook is a professor of Science Education and Global Ecology at Boston University. He teaches the graduate Symbiosis course there, a course that Lynn Margulis passed on to him more than 20 years ago. He served as President of the International Symbiosis Society for ten years and is now a Vice-President. He received his PhD in Biology, specializing in lichen symbiosis, from Clark University and conducted research on the origins of plastids at the University of Tuebingen, Germany.