Mak Saito is a Senior Scientist in the Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received his Ph.D from the MIT-Woods Hole Joint Program in Chemical Oceanography, and did his postdoctoral and undergraduate studies at Princeton University and Oberlin College, respectively. His research interests include the global biogeochemical cycling of chemical elements and using that knowledge to promote sustainable human economies. The Saito laboratory studies the interactions between metals and microbial life using a combination of cutting-edge analytical chemistry and proteomic technologies. They also conduct metal physiological studies with cultures of marine microbes that they and others have isolated from marine environments from the Costa Rica Dome to the Ross Sea of Antarctica. The scientific questions they study relate to understanding the geographical distributions, chemical transformations, and ecological and biochemical importance of bioactive metals and micronutrients, such as iron, cobalt, zinc, cadmium, nickel, manganese, and vitamin B12, in the modern ocean. In addition, they study how the metal requirements in life might have coevolved with biogeochemical cycles throughout Earth history.