Mary Hagedorn

Dr. Mary Hagedorn received her Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and has been a Research Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution for the past 17 years. She has worked in aquatic ecosystems around the world from the Amazon to Africa, has taught many university-level classes, lectures frequently to lay audiences. In the past years, she has received several research grants from the National Institutes of Health to support her research and has collaborators in over 30 institutions throughout the world. In 2000, she received the prestigious George E. Burch Fellowship in Theoretic Medicine and Affiliated Theoretic Sciences and was nominated for the Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation. Dr. Hagedorn is a marine physiologist whose work has broad conservation implications. She studies the conservation coral species using cryobiology- the study of cells under cold conditions. In this approach, cells are frozen and placed into liquid nitrogen where they can remain frozen, but alive for decades in a genetic bank. Dr. Hagedorn has created the first genome repository for endangered coral species and has distributed this germplasm to three banks around the world. If necessary, these banks could one day help reseed our oceans.