Pukyong National University

The professor of tenacity found 2,419 species of plankton during his life
- Professor Hur Sung Bum led Korea to one of the five nations holding microalgae species

Prof. Hur, majoring in farming ecology, started his post at Pukyong National University in 1982, challenged the separation of plankton species for the first time domestically and collected and separated 2,419 species in total until recently. His achievement led Korea, a barren land for microalgae research to become one of the 5 nations holding microalgae species, followed by the US, the UK, Germany and Japan.

Microalgae are a kind of creatures in the lowest position of the food chain. The motivation for his research was attributed to his major, which made him find and grow certain kinds of microalgae that are feed for fish to raise it.

Microalgae have taken center stage these days because it is needed for various research areas such as development of petroleum extraction as well as new medicine and health supplement food. For these kinds of research and development, researchers of universities, corporations and hospitals are using microalgae of Korea Marine Microalgae Culture Center whose director is Prof. Hur.

Meanwhile, separating microalgae species is a quite complicated task because of their invisibility attributed to the size of microalgae - only two or three micron (µ). One species of microalgae is separated using micropipette, a precise tool with collected sea water or fresh water t put on a microscope and germs are eliminated from the species with antibiotics. And also the species should be transferred to new mediums for its survival and it takes 6 months on average to culture one species of microalgae purely.

Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning has appreciated his future oriented research and development where much of time and passion is required, appointed his laboratory as a national research resources bank and supported his work for 20 years from 1995. 

2,419 species of microalgae growing in 10ml test-tube respectively has been prepared to move as this rare search results are now planning to transfer to Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology (KIOST), a government-affiliated organization from Pukyong National University due to his retirement. This is the first case that a lifetime research of one professor is transferred to the nation and continued.

“At least 5 or 6 microscope have devoted their lives in the laboratory until now,” said Hur smiling, “and I look forward to much more advanced research from our descendants on the basis of our research which took a lot of time and efforts.” <Pukyong Today>