Mary Hagedorn makes the case that every second breath we take is created by an organism from the ocean. As a Research Scientist at the National Zoological Park, Hagedorn is a physiologist who has pioneered many state-of-the-art techniques that may help save our coral reefs. She has developed a conservation program for coral species, using cryobiology, an approach in which the embryos and sperm are frozen and placed into liquid nitrogen, where they remain frozen, but alive, for decades in a genetic bank. 

Hagedorn received her Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 2000, she received the George E. Burch Fellowship in Theoretic Medicine and Affiliated.